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 .57 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM 
 
 ANTONIO ROSMINI-SERBATI 

 
 THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM 
 
 OF 
 
 ANTONIO ,ROSMINI-SERBATI 
 
 TRANSLATED, WITH A 
 
 SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE, BIBLIOGRAPHY, 
 INTRODUCTION, AND NOTES 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS DAVIDSON 
 
 LONDON 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., i, PATERNOSTER SQUARE
 
 (JThe rights of tramlatioti attci of reproduction are reserz>ed.)
 
 TO 
 
 HER HIGHNESS 
 
 THE PRINCESS CAROLYNE 
 
 OF SAYN-WITTGENSTEIN, 
 
 Whose rank is inferior to her piety, intellect, and worth ; whose 
 devotion to her own creed is equalled only by her tolerance for all 
 other creeds believed in sincerity of heart ; who has always en- 
 couraged me to pursue clear truth without thought of compromise, 
 and to whom I owe, among many other great benefits, my first 
 acquaintance with Rosmini, I dedicate this work, as a slight token 
 of gratitude and affection. 
 
 THOMAS DAVIDSON.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 The purpose of the present work is threefold : fi}'st, 
 to introduce the most important of modern ItaHan 
 philosophical systems to the notice of English-speak- 
 ing thinkers who have not had an opportunity of 
 studying it in the original language ; second, to 
 present it fairly to those for whom it has been 
 systematically misrepresented ; and, t/rn^d, to furnish 
 an introductory handbook to the study of modern 
 Italian thought, so little known outside of Italy. 
 
 With the exception of a small work edited by 
 Father Lockhart, a brief notice in the American 
 translation of Ueberweg's Handbuch der Geschichte 
 der Philosophie, an essay by Monseigneur Ferre, 
 a few notices in Brownson's Quarterly Review, and 
 a few sketches by myself in various periodicals, there 
 exists hardly anything in English on Rosmini.* Of 
 systematic attempts that have been made to stir up 
 an odium theologicum against Rosmini's system, it 
 would be inedifying to say anything more than is 
 said in the Introduction. The present condition of 
 thought in Northern Europe is such that no apology 
 
 * See Bibliography.
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 seems needed for directinof the attention of Enorllsh 
 thinkers to a school of philosophy which professes, 
 by combining ancient with modern thought, to find 
 an absolute criterion of certainty, and to afford a 
 firm assurance of much that more one-sided systems 
 are constrained to abandon. Rosmini has exerted a 
 wide and most beneficial influence on the thought of 
 Italy, an influence equalled in degree only by that 
 of Aristotle and Kant. Indeed, it may be safely 
 affirmed that no one can read Rosmini's works with- 
 out, voluntarily or involuntarily, being Impressed by 
 them. 
 
 When I first resolved to present an outline of 
 Rosmini's philosophy in an English dress, three 
 courses seemed open to me — either to translate some 
 one of the numerous rdsiunds of it, which have 
 appeared in Italy, to write an original account of it 
 myself, or in some way to introduce Rosmini as 
 speaking in his own person. That the first of these 
 courses was hardly feasible, I discovered on carefully 
 examining the rdstmids referred to. Even those of 
 Buroni, and of Calza and Perez, which would best 
 have answered my purposes, I found open to grave 
 objections. The former, as its title sufficiently in- 
 dicates,* contains a good deal of irrelevant matter ; 
 while the latter is not only too extensive, but, thanks 
 to underhand ecclesiastical influence, has never been 
 completed, the third volume remaining unpublished. 
 As to the second alternative, frequent attempts to 
 
 * Deir Essere e del Conoscere. Studii su rarmenide, Platone e Rosmini.
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 convey the true meaning of Rosmini's thought to 
 others in my own language convinced me that the 
 difficulty of presenting it was far greater than I had 
 supposed. Seeing myself, therefore, shut up to the 
 third course, I came to the conclusion that I should 
 best attain my end by adopting, as the basis of my 
 work, the Sistema Filosojico or rSsumd of Rosmini's 
 system, compiled by the author for Cantu's Storia 
 Universale, accompanying it with explanations of my 
 own and parallel passages from his longer works. 
 In this way, I hoped to afford a general notion 
 of the whole, and at the same time to impart a 
 special knowledge of its more characteristic and 
 essential features. The sections of the Sistema, 
 therefore, correspond to the Dictate which German 
 philosophers not unfrequently read to their students 
 to be written down verbatim, while the notes or 
 excu7^sus answer to their viva voce explanations or 
 lectures. The Introduction is intended to show the 
 position which Rosmini's philosophy occupies with 
 reference to other systems, ancient and modern, and 
 in the universal history of human thought. 
 
 As far as possible I have allowed Rosmini to 
 speak for himself. Only in a few cases have I 
 introduced condensations, explanations, and criti- 
 cisms of my own, and several of these last deal 
 with the relation of Rosmini's doctrines to systems 
 that have been promulgated since his death. In all 
 ways it has been my aim to make clear what seem 
 to me the essential points of the system, those points
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 which constitute it a remedy against the idealisms, 
 materiaHsms, and scepticisms by which the thought 
 of the present day is wasted. 
 
 In reference to the sketch of Rosmini's life, I 
 ought to say that I have written it from a standpoint 
 not entirely my own. This I deemed both courteous 
 and permissible, all the more so that in an article in 
 the Foi'tnightly Review I have dwelt with sufficient 
 emphasis on what seem to me the limitations of his 
 character and the defects of his religious creed. 
 
 The Bibliography is as nearly complete as I 
 have been able to make it. Of its defects I have 
 spoken in a note prefatory to it. 
 
 The footnotes, which are all due to me, will, it is 
 hoped, be useful to the reader, and will not draw 
 upon the writer the charge of excessive pedantry. 
 
 I have tried to turn Rosmini's somewhat diffuse 
 Italian into readable English, and, I am well aware, 
 with only partial success. Those, however, who best 
 know the difficulties of rendering the philosophical 
 style and terminology of one language into those of 
 another, will, I am sure, be most indulgent toward 
 my shortcomings. I w^ould respectfully ask those who 
 may feel inclined to blame me for employing such 
 words as intuite, exigence, etc., to suggest other less 
 objectionable words fitted to fill with credit the 
 places of these. I would likewise ask those who, 
 from an outside point of view, whether Hegelian, 
 Comtian, Spencerian, or any other, may, at the first 
 glance, feel incHned to cast aside Rosminianism as 
 
 o
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 merely resuscitated Scholasticism, to reserve their 
 judgment until they are sure they have a full and 
 complete comprehension of the system. It is 
 difficult to comprehend : this ought to be frankly 
 admitted. This difficulty, however, is due, not so 
 much to the system itself, as to the fact that much 
 of the terminology in which it is expressed has, in 
 recent centuries, been so wrested from its proper use 
 and meaning as to be now almost incapable of con- 
 veying truth. This is especially true with regard 
 to such terms as subject, object, intuition, perception^ 
 intelligence, feeling, etc., which in the mouths of 
 most modern thinkers have little or no intelligible 
 meaning. For years I found it very difficult to 
 enter into Rosmini's thought, and I feel quite sure 
 that no one, without a most careful study of his terms, 
 will be much more fortunate than I was. With a 
 view to facilitating this study, I have included in my 
 notes as many definitions as possible, and have 
 placed an index of them at the end of the volume. 
 
 As the whole of the work, with the exception of 
 the translation of the Sistema and a few parts of the 
 Bibliography, was written in a remote village of the 
 Piedmontese Alps, where I had access to few books 
 beyond that portion of my own library which I had 
 been able to transport thither, a few quotations and 
 references had to be taken at second hand. For 
 any inaccuracy that may occur in these I must crave 
 the reader's indulgence. 
 
 In conclusion, I beg to return my most sincere
 
 XI 1 PREFACE. 
 
 thanks to the members of the Rosminian Order for 
 numerous acts of kindness and courtesy displayed to 
 me in the course of my researches into the hfe and 
 philosophy of their Founder, and to say that, though 
 they have encouraged me in the publication of this 
 work, they are in no way responsible for any opinion 
 expressed by me in reference either to the doctrines 
 of Rosmini or to the views and purposes of those 
 who have attacked these doctrines. I am informed, 
 on good authority, that they intend soon to publish 
 an English translation of Rosmini's first important 
 work, the New Essay on the Origin of Ideas. I 
 have further to thank my friend, Dr. J. Burns- 
 Gibson, for reading over the proofs of the work. 
 
 London, 
 
 February 27, 1882.
 
 CONTENTS, 
 
 77?^ Contents of the Notes are preceded by a (^ — ). 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Sketch of Rosmini's Life ... ... ... ... ... xxv 
 
 Bibliography of Rosmini's Works ... ... ... ... H 
 
 Bibliography of Works bearing on Rosmini's Life and 
 
 Philosophy ... ... ... ... ... ... ixxii 
 
 Introduction ... ... ... ... ... ... Ixxxix 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 Introductory. 
 
 § I. What is Philosophy? — Various definitions ... ... ... i 
 
 § 2. Ultimate grounds.^Formal, real, and moral grounds ... ... 4 
 
 § 3. Philosophy general and special. — Philosophy and Science ... 8 
 
 §4. Point of departure — Experience ... ... ... ... 9 
 
 §5. Different forms of mental quiet. — Nature of assent ... ... n 
 
 § 6. Popular and philosophical knowing ... ... ... ... 15 
 
 §7. Philosophy the restorer of repose of intellect .. ... ... 16 
 
 § 8. Difference between demonstration and persuasion. — Direct, popular, 
 
 and philosophical science ... ... .. ... ... 16 
 
 § 9. The first questions put by philosophy and their consequences. — Philo- 
 sophy, regressive and progressive. Four starting-points distin- 
 guished ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 19 
 
 Sciences of Intuition. 
 
 I. Ideology. 
 
 §10. Ideology and Logic. — Rosmini's chief merit in philosophy ... 22 
 
 § II. Internal observation the method of Ideology. — Philosophy does not 
 
 begin with an hypothesis, as Hegel thought ... ... 27 
 
 §12. Objection to the validity of observation answered ... ... 30 
 
 § 13. Human cognitions, though innumerable, have a common element. — 
 
 Abstraction 
 § 14. Cognition of real entities is an internal affirmation or judgment. — 
 Synthesis must precede analysis. Kant and his .synthetic judg- 
 ments ^ //wr? ... ... ... ... ... ... 22 
 
 § 15. The notion of being in general is a necessary condition of the cog- 
 nition of particular real beings. — Real and ideal being. Ideal 
 being innate. St. Thomas quoted ... .. ... ... 36 
 
 31
 
 XIV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 1 6. Being in general is known by intuition. Two great classes of 
 
 human cognitions. — Intuition and perception ... ... 40 
 
 §17. Order of the two classes. — Universality ; its nature ... ... 41 
 
 § 18. Being in general and particular being. By intuition we know the 
 essence of being. — Being has two modes. Aristotle and the Ger- 
 man school criticized for confounding the two. Kant. Hegelian 
 Logic ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 44 
 
 § 19. When I affirm a particular real being, what do I know more than 
 before ? The cause of affirmation is a feeling. The formula for 
 affirmative cognitions. — Real being. Intellective perception sees 
 passivity on its obverse side as activity ... ... ... 59 
 
 § 20. What this formula presupposes. It is feeling that constitutes the 
 reality of being. — Subject and object. The ancient meaning differs 
 from the modern ... 
 
 § 21. In what sense the essence of being is universal. — Principle and term 64 
 
 § 22. Examination of the objections to the identification of reality with 
 
 feeling. — Matter. Pure reality .. ... ... ... 66 
 
 § 23. Identity between the essence of being and the activity manifested in 
 
 feeling. — Ideal and real being ... ... ... ... 69 
 
 §24. This identity imperfect. — Universality... ... ... ... 70 
 
 § 25. The essence of being is realized in the difference, as Avell as in the 
 
 identity of real being ... ... ... ... ... 73 
 
 § 26. Corollaries derived from the identity of the essence of being and the 
 
 multiplicity of its realizations ... ... ... ... 73 
 
 § 27. Quantity belongs to the realization, not to the essence, of being. — 
 
 Parmenides. The One and the Many ... ... • • • 75 
 
 § 28. Ideas which make known the negation of being. All ideas of par- 
 ticular beings consist of positive and negative. There is but one 
 idea, the essence of being, and all the rest are relations of it. 
 — Negative and particular ideas ... ... ... ... 79 
 
 § 29. In respect to quantity, the essence of being and beings perceived by 
 
 us are different, not identical. — Contingency... ... ... 81 
 
 § 30. The identity between the essence of being and real beings exists 
 
 between them only in so far as they are known ... ... 82 
 
 § 31. It is only as known that real being identifies itself with ideal being. 
 Perception not less true on that account. — Universality not derived 
 from things ... ... ... ... ... ... 83 
 
 § 32. Why we think we do not know the ground of things. — The intellect 
 knows things in an absolute mode. Passion and action. Intel- 
 lective perception ... ... ... ... ... 84 
 
 § 33- Why being, as a means of cognition, is called ideal. — Rosmini's 
 
 system not idealism. Mezn?, sub qtio ... ... ... 87 
 
 § 34. The essence of being is self- intelligible and forms the intelligibility 
 of all other things. The idea of being is the light of reason, is 
 inborn, and is the form of intelligence. — The idea of being not 
 derived from external sensation, feeling of our own existence, 
 reflection or the act of perception. It is, therefore, innate. Mean- 
 ing of /«««/<; ... ... ... ..• ... ... 88 
 
 § 35. Meaning of the word form. Two senses of the word form. In 
 which of the two senses is the idea o/beinj used ? Object and Sub-
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 ject and their relation. Kant's forms not objective, but subjective. 
 — Form of cognition. Criticism of Kant's Table of Categories. 
 The modal categories — necessary, actual, possible ... ... 92 
 
 § 36. All intelligence is reducible to thinking being as realized in a cer- 
 tain manner, with certain limits. — Though the soul is finite, its 
 means of cognizing is infinite ... ... ... ... 106 
 
 § 37. In what sense ideal being is said to be possible. — Ideal being, being 
 
 in itself, and being as object ... ... ... ... 108 
 
 § 38. How possible and ideal beings are said to be many.— Concept is 
 
 one ; the things conceived are many ... ... ... 109 
 
 § 39. Ideality a mode of being incapable of being confounded with reality 1 10 
 
 § 40. Differences between ideas and the things known by means of them in 
 
 §41. Essence known through idea ; subsistence, through affirmation on 
 occasion of a feeling. — Contingent things have two inconfusible 
 modes of being ... ... ... ... ... ... 112 
 
 § 42. How in perception we unite ideal being with feeling. — Rosmini's 
 
 Theory of Cognition ... ... ... ... ... 114 
 
 § 43. Objection to calling intellective perception a judgment. Answer. 
 The objection does not touch the fact, but only the propriety of 
 the term. — Difference between Rosmini and Kant. Reid ... 119 
 
 § 44. Is this affirmation a judgment ? No judgment is possible without 
 the union of its terms. — The elements of a judgment are com- 
 bined by nature ... ... ... ... ... 124 
 
 § 45. In intellective perception, it is not intelligence, but nature, that 
 unites the terms of the judgment. This judgment produces its 
 own subject. — Kant's errors ... ... ... ... 126 
 
 § 46. The ierm judgmejit Aoes not express the nature of affirmation, but a 
 subsequent reflection analyzes it. — The terms of a judgment are 
 perceived as one ... ... ... ... ... 128 
 
 § 47. Reflection, in analyzing a judgment, distinguishes, but does not sepa- 
 rate, its elements. Subject and predicate do not exist prior to 
 the judgment, but are formed in the act of judgment. — Direct 
 and reflexive cognition ... ... ... ... ... 129 
 
 § 48. Difference- between primitive affirmations and other judgments. 
 The nature of the primitive judgment further illustrated. — The 
 predicate is contained in the concept of the subject ... ... 132 
 
 § 49. The primitive judgment may also be called the primitive synthesis. 
 
 — Perception spontaneous, abstraction voluntary ... ... 136 
 
 § 50. Convertibility of the terms of the primitive judgment. — Ancient 
 
 mode of expressing judgments ... ... ... ... 137 
 
 § 51. Solution of the problem of the origin of ideas. — The Light of 
 
 Reason ... ... ... ... ... ... 138 
 
 § 52. N'ew Essay and Restoration of Philosophy. — Logic the link be- 
 tween Ideology and Metaphysics ... ... ... ... 139 
 
 2. Logic. 
 
 § 53. Logic. — Aristotelian and Hegelian Logic ... ... ... 140 
 
 § 54. Aim of reasoning and nature of conviction. — Certainty and its con- 
 ditions... ... ... ... ••• ••• ••• 15S
 
 xvi CONTENTS. 
 
 §55. Twofold office of Logic ... ... ... ... ... IS9 
 
 § 56. What is truth? Truth is the form of our intelligence. — Truth and 
 
 being synonymous terms. Criticism ... ... ... 159 
 
 §57. Contirmation of the same doctrine. — Meaning of truth ... ... 162 
 
 § 58. Transcendental scepticism objects to the doctrine that the mind by 
 its nature possesses the first truth. Reply. In the case of uni- 
 versal being, illusion is impossible. Two kinds of being. Proof 
 of the impossibility of the first illusion. — No concept illusory ... 163 
 
 §59. The impossibility of the second illusion proved ... ... 165 
 
 § 60. Transition from observation to the proof that observation is a valid 
 
 source of knowledge. 'Mtdimngol abstract .,, ... ... 166 
 
 § 61. Error impossible in ideas generic and specific. Ideas the exemplary 
 
 truths of things ... ... ... ... ... ... 167 
 
 §62. There can be no error without a judgment. — Aristotle cited ... 168 
 
 § 63. There are judgments absolutely free from error. — Nouns and verbs 169 
 
 § 64. Such are the judgments expressing what is contained in an idea. 
 What are principles? Meaning of absurd. — Principle of con- 
 tradiction. Aristotle cited ... ... ... ... 172 
 
 § 65. Primitive judgments affirming that what is felt exists are free from 
 error. The child affirms being only, not its modes. — No doubt 
 respecting feeling as such. Individiuivi vagtim ... ... 1 74 
 
 § 66. In perception we add the essence of being to the felt activity, but 
 we never confound the two. — Perception distinguished from sen- 
 sation. Theories of Reid and Hamilton ... ... ... 176 
 
 § 67. Judgments respecting the mode of perceived beings. Condition of 
 their validity. Three possibilities with regard to this condition. 
 We may be deceived in determining the modes of perceived 
 being ; but we are not necessarily so. — Origin of error ... iSo 
 
 § 68. We have a faculty for affirming exactly what we feel, and this 
 faculty is only another function of the faculty whereby we affirm 
 being apart from its modes. Deception arises, not from this 
 faculty, but from the faculty of error which I allow to disturb it. 
 — St. Thomas on faith ... ... ... ... ... 182 
 
 § 69. The error possible in the perception of real being. Perception is 
 followed by reflection, which tries to determine the exact mode 
 of the perceived being. Error begins with reflection and keeps 
 pace with the complication and extent of it. — Nature of reflec- 
 tion ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 184 
 
 § 70. Perception infallible. Reflection may be rendered so by Logic. — 
 
 Province of Logic ... ... ... ... ... 186 
 
 § 71. Error is always voluntary. Reflection does not, save accidentally, 
 produce error. The faculty of persuasion does not always de- 
 pend, as it ought, on that of reasoning. Hence error. Various 
 causes that produce persuasion, in spite of reasoning. Error, 
 though always voluntary, is not always culpable. — Occasional 
 causes of error ... ... ... ... ... ... jgy 
 
 § 72. Three kinds of remedies against error, corresponding to its three 
 
 sources ... ... ... ... ... ... igg 
 
 §73. Sophistic. — Various kinds of .Sophisms ... ... ... 189 
 
 § 74. More on perception. Analysis of corporeal sensations. Law of
 
 CONTENTS, XVI 1 
 
 intellectual attention. The necessary nexus of objects does not 
 enter into perception. — Sensation, sensitive perception and in- 
 tellective perception distinguished. Perception limited to its 
 object. Object zxiA te7'77t ... ... ... ... ... 190 
 
 § 75- Source of Fichte's error, confusion between feeling and perception. 
 Perception separates, reflection distinguishes, its object from 
 others. — Refutation of Fichte's system. Distinction between 
 knowledge and consciousness. Nature of the -ff^i? ... ... 194 
 
 § 76. Schelling's error in asserting that the finite cannot be perceived 
 without the infinite. Origin of this error, confusion between 
 intellective perception and reasoning ... ... ... 202 
 
 § 77- How reason finds the limits, contingency, etc., of perceived beings. 
 Schelling saw dimly, but could not express the fact that the mind, 
 prior to all reasonings, must have something complete and uni- 
 versal. — Refutation of Pantheism. Albertus Magnus on the 
 active intellect ... ... ... .,. ... ... 204 
 
 § 78. Defence of the laws of perception and reasoning against the objec- 
 tions of sceptics. In external sensation we feel within us a force 
 which is not ourselves. This enables us to affirm that a being 
 exists without confounding it with ourselves. — Objects of per- 
 ception. Intellective imagination. Subject 2M.A extra-subject ... 207 
 
 § 79. Perception is the bridge between us and the external world, and 
 the difficulties of idealism arise from considering the world apart 
 from perception. — Isle.'ZxiYa.^ oi exte7-nal ivo-fld ... ... 209 
 
 § 80. Perception yields the important ontological truth that beings, in so 
 far as agents, may exist in each other without intermingling. — 
 Definitions o{ body, force. Perception of our own bodies and of 
 external bodies ... ... .•. ... <*. ... 211 
 
 § 81. Our perception of ourselves is posterior to our perception of the 
 
 external world. — Intellective perception of the ii^t? ... ... 214 
 
 § 82. Reflection would be unable to compare perceived beings together, 
 if it had not universal being, by means of which it knows the 
 mode and quantity of its realization in those beings, and, hence, 
 if they belong or not to the same species. Principle of the dis- 
 cernibility of individuals. — Individual z,nA idea of individual ... 217 
 
 §83. Origin of the ideas of numbers ... ... ... ... 218 
 
 § 84. Difference of the mode of realization constitutes difference of 
 species ; difference in quantity or actuality constitutes accidental 
 differences. — Origin of Species. Reality; two kinds of it. 
 Various kinds of real form ... ... ... ... 219 
 
 § 85. When may we say that the Ego and the non-Ego mutually limit 
 
 each other? — Affirmation does not include negation ... ... 221 
 
 § 86. The mind rises to the infinite neither in the primal perception, nor 
 in the reflection which compares the Ego and the non-Ego, but in 
 that which considers the limitation, contingency, and relativity of 
 either. — Max Miillcr on the manner in which the infinite is per- 
 ceived ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 223 
 
 § 87. The supreme principle of all our reasoning ... ... ... 224 
 
 § 88. The principle of substance one of the conditions of real being falling 
 under perception. — Modes of our idea of substance. Herbert 
 Spencer on the substance of mind ... ... ... ... 224 
 
 b
 
 XVIU CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § S9. We cannot perceive sensations pure, but only as modifications of 
 
 ourselves ... ... ... ••• ••• ... 230 
 
 § 90. Does perception take place directly or through reasoning ? — 
 
 Cognition and recognition ... ... ... ... 232 
 
 § 91. Process by which reflection translates the perception of ourselves. 
 
 — The jE>(7 a substance and a feeling ... ... ... 233 
 
 § 92. Perception does not take place blindly. — How sensation acts upon 
 
 intelligence ... ... ... ... ... ... 234 
 
 § 93. Perception is governed by the principle of substance. — Difference 
 
 between substance and cause ... ... ... ... 235 
 
 § 94. Substance and accident ... ... ... ... ... 236 
 
 § 95. Why the child, which has not perceived itself, is compelled by the 
 
 principle of substance to attribute its own sensations to bodies ... 236 
 § 96, It does not follow that the principle of substance is fallacious. 
 The errors we commit in referring accidents to the wrong sub- 
 stance may be corrected. — Subject as distinguished from extra- 
 subject ... ... ... ... ... ... 237 
 
 § 97. The principle of substance is the intuition of the essence of being, 
 the first and universal truth. — Rosmini's idea of substance not 
 Spinozistic ... ... ... ... ... ... 238 
 
 § 98. One of the conditions of reflection is the principle of cause. — Prin- 
 ciple of cause dependent on principle of contradiction, and this 
 on the principle of cognition ... ... ... ... 239 
 
 § 99. Various orders of reflection. Reflection of the first order discovers 
 the different limitations and mutual dependence of real beings. — 
 Dependence the result of reflection ... ... ... 240 
 
 § 100. Notions of cause and effect. — Refutation of scepticism with refer- 
 ence to the universality and necessity of cause ... ... 242 
 
 §101. The principle of cause is merely an application of the idea of being 
 to a perceived being, so as to see whether the latter has or has 
 not in itself subsistence. — Hypotheses. All causes either 
 physical or metaphysical ... ... ... ... 244 
 
 §102. What is contingent being? — Concept of necessity ... ... 245 
 
 § 103. The principle of integration is a development of the principle of 
 cause, and contains the reason why all peoples believe that 
 God exists. — The argument for the existence of God derived 
 from the impossibility of thinking an infinite number is entirely 
 fallacious ... ... ... ... ... ... 246 
 
 § 104. All other principles of reflection are reducible in the same 
 way to the first universal truth, the essence of being naturally 
 intuited by us ... ... ... ... ... 247 
 
 §105. Purposes of the art of reasoning ... ... ... ... 247 
 
 § 106. How errors in reasoning are avoided. — Descartes' four rules of 
 
 method. Rosmini's six norms ... ... ... ... 247 
 
 § 107. Three aims of reasoning. Hence three methods — apodeictic, 
 
 heuristic, and didactic ... ... ... ... 248 
 
 § 108. Artifice of the syllogism, to which the various forms of argument 
 
 are reducible. — Defence of the syllogism against Hegel ... 250 
 
 §109. Universal rule of the syllogism ... ... ... ... 250 
 
 § no. From the necessity of more than one middle term arises the 5^nto 250
 
 CONTENTS. xix 
 
 § III. The conclusion has the same logical value as the premises. — 
 
 Nature of probability ... ... ... ... ... 251 
 
 § 112. The sources from which a knowledge of truth is derived ... 253 
 
 §113. The didactic method is either general or particular ... ... 2^3 
 
 § 114. Supreme principles of the three methods ... ... ... 253 
 
 Sciences of Perception. '^ 
 
 § 115. Why Ideology and Logic were called Sciences of Intuition. — 
 
 Means of knowing essences ... ... ... ... 254 
 
 § 1x6. What we can perceive is ourselves and the external world. Hence 
 the two sciences, Psychology and Cosmology. — Relation of 
 Psychology to Cosmology ... ... ... ... 255 
 
 § 117. Supernatural Anthropology goes beyond the limits of mere philo- 
 sophy ... ... ... ... ... ... 256 
 
 I. Psychology. 
 
 §118. What is Psychology ? ... ... ... ... ... 256 
 
 §119. Parts of Psychology ... ... ... ... ... 256 
 
 § 120. All reasoning on the essence of the soul sets out from the feeling of 
 
 the soul. — Being ?ind feeling mAtfinshle ... ... ... 256 
 
 § 121. Difference between the feeling of our bodies and the feeling of our 
 souls. — The Ego different from sensations ... 
 
 § 122. The human soul is a principle at once sensitive and intellective. 
 
 Difference between sense and intelligence ... ... ... 260 
 
 § 123. In what sense the Ego expresses the soul, and in what sense it is 
 called the principle and subject of Psychology. — The Ego is a 
 self-affii"med subject and belongs to the Science of Logic ... 261 
 
 § 124. Complete definition of the human soul. — Definitions given by 
 Aristotle, St. Thomas, and Porphyry 
 
 § 125. Hence are deduced the other properties of the human soul. Sim- 
 plicity. Immortality. — Various kinds of simplicity. The two 
 terms of the soul. Its immortality is due to the intuited term... 264 
 
 § 126. In what sense the opinion of Plato, that the body is an obstacle to 
 the soul, is false. — Human knowledge is a series of determina- 
 tions of being ... ... ... ... ... ... 268 
 
 § 127. The extended term of feeling is double, space and body, and these 
 have opposite characters. — Nature of space and extension. The 
 external world. Atoms ... ... ... ... 269 
 
 § 128. Connection of soul and body. The incomprehensibility of this 
 connection does not give us the right to doubt the fact. — 
 Opinion of Plotinus. Of Professor Bain. The soul not a 
 mathematical point. Porphyiy on the incorporeal ... ... 278 
 
 § 129. The sentient principle feels its own body with a passivity mingled 
 with much activity. The sentient principle feels a foreign body 
 if in the body subject to its power there comes a change inde- 
 pendent of, and opposed to it ... ... ... ... 278 
 
 257
 
 XX CONTENTS. 
 
 § 130. There would be no difficulty in understanding how the soul 
 should feel external bodies, if we could understand how, being 
 a simple principle, it can have an extended term. — The 
 substance of the soul is simple. Herbert Spencer's view ... 280 
 
 § 131. A close consideration of this question shows that the continuous 
 does not lie in the single parts, but in a principle embracing them 
 all at once, and hence the continuous cannot exist, except as 
 the term of the act of a simple principle. — The principle of 
 continuity is sensation. The ultimate elements of matter are 
 animate and sentient ... ... ... ... ... 281 
 
 § 132. The first term of the sensitive soul is unmeasured space. Its 
 second term is the body which it informs. The fundamental 
 feeling. External sensations. How measured space is pre- 
 sented to feeling. — Feeling and consciousness of feeling. 
 Herbert Spencer on the fundamental feeling. We form the 
 idea of space or extension in two ways ... ... ... 287 
 
 § 133. The soul exercises no action on its first term ; but toward its 
 
 second it is both active and passive ... ... ... 290 
 
 § 134. Sensitivity and instinct ... ... ... ... ... 291 
 
 § 135. Instinct, sensual and vital. Origin of Medicine. — The various 
 
 instincts. Table of divisions of the vital instinct ... ... 291 
 
 § 136. Principle and term in the animal form a single being ... ... 295 
 
 § 137. Three kinds of feeling in the animal corresponding to the three 
 conditions of the sensible term. — Feeling of Continuity. Feel- 
 ing of Excitation. Feeling of Organization ... ... 295 
 
 § 138. Difference between (7w/w<z/t' and rt;//w(z/. — Elementary and organic 
 
 souls. The unit of natural existence is sentience ... ... 301 
 
 § 139. Laws of essential changes which the animate undergoes in respect 
 
 of its individuality. — Meaning of generation ... ... 302 
 
 § 140. The human soul, in so far as it is intellective, is united to its own 
 body by an original, inborn perception of it. — Extra-subjective 
 real body and anatomical body ... ... ... ... 304 
 
 § 141. There is a physical influence between soul and body. — Character- 
 istics of the fundamental animal feeling ... ... ... 305 
 
 § 142. How the intellective and sensitive principles are one ... ... 306 
 
 § 143. What is death? — Separation of the body from its sensible term ... 307 
 § 144. Second office of Psychology to deduce and classify the faculties of 
 
 the soul. — Powers of the intellect 
 § 145. Questions that present themselves when we try to deduce the 
 
 powers of the soul from its essence ... ... ... 311 
 
 § 146. Three classes of laws to which the soul is subject in its operations 
 
 — psychological, ontological, cosmological ... ... 312 
 
 § 147. The supreme ontological law is the principle of cognition ... 312 
 
 § 148. Cosmological laws are either laws of motion or laws of harmony 312 
 § 149. Two classes of psychological laws, corresponding to the ontologi- 
 cal and cosmological. — Composition of ^^(?, «(7«-^^(7. Infinite 313 
 § 150. The third and last aim of Psychology is to discover the destiny 
 of the human soul. The soul naturally tends to its own per- 
 fection, which consists in the full vision of the truth, full exer- 
 cise of virtue, and full attainment of happiness. These three 
 
 309
 
 CONTENTS. XXI 
 
 goods are but aspects of one and the same good. — Happiness 
 zwjw^ pleasure.,. ... ... ... ... •••313 
 
 § 151- Religious tradition alone can free man from the doubts which 
 arise from the sad spectacle of the present life, and man's 
 higher destinies must be treated in a supernatural Psychology 
 and Anthropology. — The supernatural light ... ... 315 
 
 2. Cosmology. 
 
 §152. What is Cosmology ? — The science of the extra-subjective ... 317 
 
 § 153. How Cosmology considers the world. — Parts of Cosmology ... 318 
 
 § 154. First part of Cosmology ... ... ... ... ... 3^9 
 
 §155. First proof of the creation of the world. — Nature of creation ... 3'9 
 
 § 156. Second proof. — Creation is from non-being, not from nothing ... 3^° 
 
 § 157. Third proof ... ... ... ... ... ... 321 
 
 § 158. The knowledge of the essential limitations of contingent being 
 
 completes our knowledge of its nature. — Doctrine of limits ... 321 
 
 § 159. Sublime questions to which the theme of creation gives occasion 
 
 — Possible limitations not infinite ... ... ... 322 
 
 § 160. Second part of Cosmology ... ... ... ... ... 323 
 
 §161. Third part of Cosmology ... ... ... ... ... 323 
 
 §162. Cosmology connected with Ontology and Theology ... ... 324 
 
 Sciences of Reasoning. 
 
 § 163. Sources of the principles and material of reasoning. Nature of 
 
 reasoning. — Materiated sciences ... ... ... ... 325 
 
 §164. Two classes of sciences of reasoning ... ... ... 326 
 
 I. Ontological Sciejices. 
 § 165. Ontological Sciences ... ... ... ... ... 326 
 
 A. Ontology. 
 
 § 166. Ontology. The three forms of being : the ideal, the real, and 
 
 the moral ... ... ... ... ... ... 326 
 
 § 167. The essence identical, the forms utterly distinct. — Unitarians 
 
 from Plotinus to Hegel ... ... ... ... ... 326 
 
 §168. Ideal form. Real form ... ... ... ... ... 327 
 
 §169. Moral form. — Moral good infinite ... ... ... ... 328 
 
 § 170. Properties of the three forms. — Two views of ideality ... 329 
 
 §171. The three forms are the foundation of the categories ... ... 330 
 
 § 172. The categories differ from genera and species ... ... 331 
 
 § 173. Law of the synthesism of being. — The world as absolute and as 
 
 relative ... ... ... ... ... ..• 331 
 
 § 174. Ontology examines the recesses of being to find the reason for the 
 
 distribution of being into genera and species ... ... 33^ 
 
 § 175. It seeks the essential properties of being in the light of cognition. 
 
 — Idea of God includes subsistence ... ... ... 333
 
 XX i I CONTENTS. 
 
 B. N'atin-dl Theology. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 333 
 334 
 335 
 335 
 336 
 
 §176. Natural Theology 
 
 § 177. The idea we have of God is not positive but negative 
 
 §178. First proof of the existence of God ... 
 
 §179. Second proof 
 
 § 180. Third proof 
 
 § 181. Fourth proof. — Rosmini's view of Categorical Imperative ... 336 
 
 § 182. Considering the manner in which we know God, we call our know- 
 ledge of him negative-ideal. — Negative cognition ... ... 337 
 
 § 183. Two ways in which our minds rise to the Absolute Being ... 347 
 
 § 184. Theology must supplement what was said in the Cosmology of the 
 
 divine operations «^ ^jr/ra ... ... ... ... 348 
 
 §185. Of the divine essence ... ... ... ... ... 348 
 
 § 186. Can the human intelligence, fortified by revelation, know that the 
 divine essence must exist in three persons? Views of Ermene- 
 gildo Pini and the Abbe Mastrofini ... ... ... 348 
 
 §187. On the creative act ... ... ... ... ... 349 
 
 § 188. The exposition of the divine attributes leads to Theodicy, which 
 deals with the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, as dis- 
 played in the world. — Contents of Rosmini's Theodicy ... 349 
 
 2. Decjitological Sciences. 
 
 § 189. Deontological Sciences ... ... ... ... ... 350 
 
 §190. Deontology general and special ... ... ... ... 351 
 
 A. General Deontology. 
 
 §191. General Deontology. Three classes of relations of perfection ... 351 
 § 192. These relations are immutable and complete in the Supreme 
 
 Being. In contingent being they are more or less realized ... 351 
 
 § 193. Perfection, real, intellectual, and moral ... ... ... 352 
 
 §194. The relations of perfection have a double exigence ... ... 352 
 
 § 195. Objective exigence ... ... ... ... ... 353 
 
 § 196. Subjective exigence ... ... ... ... ... 353 
 
 § 197. Meaning of " exigence " ... ... ... ... ... 353 
 
 § 198. The exigences, or necessities, in virtue of which the relations pecu- 
 liar to the various classes of beings claim realization 
 § 199. Physical, intellectual, and moral necessities have each two forms, 
 
 an ontological and a deontological ... ... ... 354 
 
 § 200. Perfection, being a form, may be either objective or subjective ... 354 
 § 201. The form which perfects real being is subjective, and is either a 
 
 constituent element of that being or a distinct reality ... 355 
 
 §202. The form which perfects intelligent beings is objective ... 355 
 
 §203. The form which perfects moral beings is subjective-objective ... 355 
 
 §204. What is moral obligation ? ... ... ... ... 3^5 
 
 § 205. First difference between moral perfection and that of real and 
 
 intellectual beings ... ... ... ... ... ocy 
 
 § 206, Second difference ... ... ... ... ... 3C7 
 
 353
 
 CONTENTS. XXIU 
 
 PAGE 
 
 § 207. Third difference ... ... ... ... ... 357 
 
 §208. Three parts of the doctrine of the perception of being ... ... 358 
 
 §209. Nature of the object of each of these parts ... ...- ... 358 
 
 B. Special Deontology. 
 
 § 2IQ. Vastness of Special Deontology. — Callology ... ... 359 
 
 §211. Human Deontology ... ... ... ... ... 361 
 
 § 212. The doctrine of moral perfection implicitly contains the whole 
 
 doctrine of human perfection ... ... ... ... 362 
 
 § 213. Doctrine of human perfection embraces three parts — archetypes, 
 actions, means. (a) Teletics. (0) Ethics. (7) Ascetics. 
 (5) Education, (e) Economy. (?) Politics. (0 Cosmopolitics. 362 
 § 214. (a) Teletics. The Archetype of man, both in the natural and super- 
 natural orders, is Jesus Christ ... ... ... ... 363 
 
 § 215. (;8) Ethics ... ... ... ... ... ... 363 
 
 § 216. Ethics includes three parts, corresponding to its three offices. 
 
 {a) General Ethics, {b) Special Ethics, (r) Eud^emonology ... 364 
 § 217. {a) General Ethics treats of the essence of virtue. First element 
 of moral good is the will. Second element of moral good is 
 law. — There is no special moral faculty or Practical Reason, in 
 Kant's sense ... ... ... ... ... ... 3^5 
 
 § 218. What part of human action is moral in itself and what by parti- 
 cipation ... ... ... ... ... ... 367 
 
 § 219. A man is not completely virtuous until he refers every action to 
 
 God as his ultimate aim ... ... ... ... 367 
 
 § 220. God's will is the source of divine positive law ... ... 368 
 
 § 221. Why there are duties toward human nature, which is contingent 
 
 and limited ... ... ... ... ... ... 368 
 
 § 222. Special logic of Ethics. — Jesuits on the Lex dubia ... ... 369 
 
 § 223. Third element of moral good is the relation between will and law 369 
 § 224. (b) Special Ethics treats of the special forms of moral good and evil 370 
 § 225. (c) Eudsemonology shows the beauty of moral good and the turpi- 
 tude of moral evil, in themselves and in their effects... ... 370 
 
 § 226. Rational Right ... ... ... ... ... ... 371 
 
 §227. Sphere of the Science of Right ... ... ... ... 372 
 
 § 228. Fundamental division of a man's rights in relation to other men 372 
 §229. What is freedom ? — Aristotle's view ... ... ... 372 
 
 §230. What is property ? ... ... ... ... ... 373 
 
 §231. Two parts of the Science of Right ... ... ... ... 374 
 
 §232. Subject of Individual Right ... ... ... ... 374 
 
 § 233. Social Right based on Individual Right ... ... ... 375 
 
 §234. Social Right, universal and particular ... ... ... 375 
 
 §235. Universal Social Right is either internal or external ... ... 375 
 
 § 236. Internal Right is divided into Signorial, Political, and Com- 
 munal Right ... ... ... ... ... ... 376 
 
 § 237. Particular Social Right arises from the application to particular 
 societies of the principles of universal Social Right. Three 
 societies necessary to the human race ... ... ... 37^
 
 XXIV 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 § 238. Theocratic Right either initial or perfect 
 
 § 239. Domestic Right twofold, conjugal and parental 
 
 § 240. There may be a general, as well as a special, theory of civil society 
 
 § 241. The supreme problem of the Science of Right 
 
 § 242. Wherein consists External Right 
 
 § 243. (7) Ascetics 
 
 §244. (5) Education 
 
 §245, Three parts of Education ... 
 
 § 246. Physical and intellectual must be made subordinate to moral 
 
 education 
 § 247. (e) Economy 
 
 § 248. Conditions necessary for the prosperity of the family 
 § 249. The government of the family tends to bring the members of a 
 
 family nearer the aim of existence 
 I 250. Nature and limits of family government 
 §251. Vices belonging to domestic society ,.. 
 
 § 252. (<^) Politics, — Rosmini's works on this subject 
 §253. Political rules 
 §254. Four sources of political rules 
 § 255. First source, the end of Civil Society 
 § 256. Second source ... ... 
 
 § 257. Third source 
 
 § 258. Fourth source 
 
 § 259. The Catholic religion is the most powerful political means, the 
 
 one which tempers and harmonizes all the rest 
 § 260. [Q Cosmopolitics 
 §261. End and fruit of philosophy ... 
 
 § 262. The true philosopher's self-surrender to God ... 
 §263. Philosophy a school of humanity 
 List of Authors quoted or referred to ... 
 Index to Definitions and Principal Subjects 
 
 PAGE 
 
 377 
 377 
 377 
 378 
 379 
 379 
 379 
 380 
 
 3^1 
 381 
 381 
 382 
 
 382 
 382 
 383 
 384 
 384 
 384 
 385 
 386 
 386 
 
 387 
 387 
 388 
 388 
 388 
 391 
 393
 
 SKETCH OF 
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. 
 
 If we consult any of even the most recent general histories 
 of philosophy — for example, those of Schwegler, Erdmann, 
 and Ueberweg — we shall naturally come to the conclusion 
 that, since the days of the Reformation, when Scholasticism 
 fell into disrepute and the apostles of new doctrines, such 
 as Giordano Bruno and Lucilio Vanini, perished at the 
 stake, there has been no philosophy in the Catholic 
 countries, no fresh thought in the Church — indeed, no 
 advance in speculation, except developments of Cartesianism, 
 anywhere. Nevertheless, this is so far from being the case 
 that Italy, the very centre and home of Catholicism, may 
 be safely affirmed to have produced in the last hundred 
 years more solid thought, more thought that will prove 
 a lasting possession, than any other single country in 
 Europe, and to be at the present day the only country 
 blessed with a system of thought that still asserts its ability 
 to furnish a rational basis for life according to the highest 
 ideals. 
 
 It is, indeed, true that Italy, after the decay of Scho- 
 lasticism, fell for a time into a condition of philosophic 
 sterility ; but this was in large measure compensated for by 
 the scientific labours of such men as Galileo Galilei and Giam- 
 battista Vico, each of whom marked an epoch in the study
 
 XXVI THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINL 
 
 to which he devoted himself. When, in the seventeenth 
 century, philosophy began to revive, it did so in the form of 
 the subjectivism of Descartes and Malebranche and the 
 sensism of Locke and Condillac. Of the two, the latter had 
 by far the greater influence and the larger number of 
 followers. This was due mainly to two circumstances •.firsts 
 to the long residence of Condillac in Italy, as tutor to 
 Prince Ferdinand of Parma (1758- 1768) ; and, second, to the 
 readiness with which the doctrine itself answered the ends 
 of the Jesuit school of thought, ever ready to depreciate the 
 powers of human intelligence and to find an excuse for 
 claiming assent to its own incomprehensible dogmas. A 
 third influence which favoured the spread of Condillac's 
 doctrines in Italy was the almost universal popularity 
 which everything of French origin enjoyed in his time. At 
 all events, during the latter half of last century and the 
 first quarter of this, the popular philosophy in Italy was 
 sensism. It found its way into numerous text-books which, 
 through the strong influence of the Jesuits, supplanted the 
 old Scholastic manuals in nearly all the schools of the 
 peninsula. But it was not only among the clergy that this 
 doctrine found adherents. Among the laity, Gioja (1767- 
 1829) and Romagnosi (1761-1835) embraced it and de- 
 veloped it in the direction in which it has always' done most 
 good, viz., in that of law and legislation. Towards the 
 year 1820, criticism or Kantianism, the German development 
 of Lockian sensism, began to make its appearance in Italy, 
 especially in the works of Pasquale Galluppi, one of the 
 most considerable of Italian philosophers ; and from that 
 day to this it has exercised a sensible influence on nearly all 
 Italian thinkers. But neither sensism nor its development, 
 criticism, is congenial to Italian natures or calculated to 
 encourage their healthy unfolding. Sensism may free from
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. XXVU 
 
 superstition, and criticism supplement the result by sharpen- 
 ing the intelligence ; but neither or both could restore that 
 balance between head, heart, and sense which makes the 
 life of the virtuous Italian. Accordingly, the immediate 
 effect of Transalpine philosophies was merely to start a 
 fermentation, which, though, thanks to other influences, it 
 produced in the end much good, was itself detrimental to 
 faith, in its true and best sense, and, as a consequence, to 
 science, art, and morals. Indeed, in the first three decades 
 of this century, the condition of Italy, political, moral, social, 
 and intellectual, was, through foreign influences largely, such 
 as might well inspire distrust and despair in serious and 
 high-minded men. It was at the end of this period and 
 under these unfavourable circumstances that there appeared 
 before the world a man destined to initiate a new era in 
 thought. Of the life of that man, the following is a brief 
 sketch. 
 
 Antonio Rosmini-Serbati * was born on the 25th of 
 March, 1797, at Rovereto f in the Italian Tyrol. His 
 father was Pier Modesto Rosmini-Serbati, belonging to an 
 old, wealthy, and noble family, originally called Aresmino or 
 Eresmino, and his mother a Countess Giovanna dei For- 
 menti, from Riva on the Lake of Garda. Both, like many 
 
 * This sketch ewes its materials mostly to Father Paoli's recently published 
 ■worVi, Delia Vila di Antonio Rosmini-Serbati i^oxvcvo, 1880); to Rosmini's own 
 account, also recently published, of his mission to Rome, Delia Missione di 
 Antonio Rosmini-Serbati alia Corte di Roma, negli Anni 1848-49 (Paravia, 
 Torino, 1881) ; and to frequent conversations with persons who knew Rosmini 
 well. 
 
 t Rovereto is a picturesque town of some twenty thousand inhabitants, 
 standing on the left bank of the Adige, a few miles below Trent. The house, or 
 palazzo, in which Rosmini was born is one of the largest and handsomest in the 
 place. Including some additions made to it recently by his followers, it con- 
 tains about a hundred and fifty rooms, in which are stored a large part of Ros- 
 mini's hbrary, some twenty thousand engravings, and many oil paintings, 
 together with relics of every period of his life. An excellent statue of him by 
 the sculptor, Vincenzo Consani, adorns the public square. See Paoli's Antonio 
 Rosmini e la sua Prosapia (Rovereto, 1880).
 
 XXVlll THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINL 
 
 of their ancestors, were cultivated, generous, and pious 
 people, zealously devoted to the interests of the Church, 
 but do not seem to have been in any other way remarkable. 
 They had four children — Margherita, who became a nun and 
 a remarkable woman, Antonio, Giuseppe, and Felice, the 
 last of whom died in infancy. Antonio was a delicate and 
 finely organized child, and very early showed signs of those 
 virtues of head and heart for which he afterwards became 
 remarkable, as well as of that religious and devotional ten- 
 dency which gave aim to his whole life. His childhood and 
 youth were full of " sweetness and light " {lumen ct didcedo, 
 as St. Bonaventura says), full of quiet, pure, unconscious 
 happiness, in whose sunshine all goodness and nobleness 
 grew like trees beside a constant river. Reared amid scenes 
 at once beautiful, grandiose, and suggestive of immensity, 
 he became affected at an early age with a loving sense of 
 the_ majesty and mystery of Nature. Being fond of study, 
 he entered, when still very young, the gymnasium of his 
 native town, and there so distinguished himself that the 
 rector was able to predict, in no indefinite terms, the boy's 
 future greatness. After leaving the gymnasium, he re- 
 mained two years at home, studying privately, under the 
 excellent Father Orsi, mathematics and philosophy, two 
 subjects for which he early displayed great tendency and 
 capacity. Father Orsi, like most Italian thinkers of his 
 time, was in philosophy a Lockian, and tried to impart that 
 system to his pupil ; but the latter, having already conned 
 the writings of the Schoolmen, so confounded his teacher 
 by his subtle objections, that the good father was soon 
 obliged to confine his instruction to the subject of mathe- 
 matics. It was in the course of these two years (1815-16) 
 that two of the most important events in Rosmini's life took 
 place — the discovery of his philosophical principle, and his
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. XXIX 
 
 determination to enter the priesthood. Of the former 
 mention will be made afterwards ; on the propriety of the 
 latter, it is hardly competent for a non-Catholic to pronounce 
 judgment. Certain it is that the step was taken with the 
 best motives and the most sincere convictions, and that he 
 never for a moment repented of it or was untrue to his faith 
 and profession ; but equally certain it is, from an outside 
 point of view, that it narrowed his views, rendered him un- 
 just to great and good men, who did not share his beliefs, 
 a,nd prevented him from becoming what he otherwise must 
 have been — the most influential thinker of the nineteenth 
 century. The truth is, as his biographer says, he seemed to 
 be born with a boundless love toward God and his fellow- 
 creatures, and this sentiment seemed to him to find fullest 
 scope in the Church, wherein God and man meet and unite in 
 love. Firm in his resolution, and after overcoming the strong 
 opposition of his parents, he left Rovereto in 1817, and 
 began his theological course at the university of Padua. 
 While there, he made many friends, bought himself a large 
 philosophical library, zealously pursued his philosophical 
 studies, and became more profoundly religious than ever. 
 In 1820 he lost his father, who left him heir to the bulk of 
 his very considerable property. In 1821 he was ordained 
 priest, and celebrated his first mass at St. Catherine's in 
 Venice. Shortly after, he made a brief visit to Rome. 
 
 From 1820 to 1826 Rosmini spent the greater part of 
 his time at his home in Rovereto, devoting himself for the 
 most part to study, contemplation, and prayer, but some- 
 times exercising priestly functions in the neighbouring 
 villages. It was during this time that the two great pur- 
 poses which shaped his whole subsequent life became clear 
 in his mind — the working out of a coherent system of truth 
 which should be a basis for revealed theology, and the
 
 XXX THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. 
 
 founding of an institution which should train teachers, and 
 especially priests, for the Church, in holiness, charity, and 
 wisdom. With a view to the former, he read in these six 
 years the works of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus ; of St. 
 Augustine, St. Thomas, and St. Bonaventura ; of Locke, 
 Descartes, Leibniz, and Condillac ; of Reid and Stewart ; of 
 Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, not to mention those of 
 minor philosophers.* As was natural in a young enthusi- 
 astic priest, deeply grieved at the declining condition of the 
 Church, his thoughts at this time ran largely in the direction 
 of constitutional law and the rights of the Papacy, and 
 induced him to write the first draft of what afterwards 
 appeared as two separate works, the Filosofia delta Politica 
 and the Filosofia del Diritto. Under the influence of the 
 Marchesa di Canossa, who had founded an institution for 
 Daughters of Charity, he was, in 1825, induced to take 
 into serious consideration the idea of adding a new order to 
 the Church. At first he meant that it should consist of lay- 
 men, but after^vards concluded that an association composed 
 in part of priests would be more useful. In both his pur- 
 poses he said he felt himself prompted by a " divine will." 
 
 From 1826 to 1828 Rosmini lived mostly in Milan, con- 
 tinuing his studies, superintending the printing of certain 
 essays and criticisms, writing out some of his larger works, 
 and drawing round him a few men to form the nucleus of 
 his projected order, the plan of which had now become 
 sufficiently clear to him. It was here that he met the ener- 
 getic French priest Loewenbruk, by whom his naturally 
 contemplative nature, prone to wait for mystical divine 
 
 * The amount of his reading is almost incredible. I have myself looked 
 through his copies of many of the philosophers mentioned, and found them 
 annotated on the margin from beginning to end. The Greek philosophers he 
 read mostly in Latin, his knowledge of Greek being very imperfect, as is clear 
 from his manuscripts. He did not read German readily.
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. XXXI 
 
 promptings, was roused into immediate activity, and himself 
 induced to take steps toward giving his order an actual 
 corporate existence. In February, 1828, he left Milan and 
 retired to Domodossola, a small but beautifully situated 
 town in the Piedmontese Alps, taking up his abode in a 
 ruined house adjoining a mediaeval tower and a church, on 
 the top of a hill, called Monte Calvario from its having a 
 Via Criicis. Here he led the life of an anchorite, feeding 
 on boiled herbs, frequently fasting, sleeping on a couch of 
 leaves, and spending his time in prayer, meditation, study, 
 and writing. Such self-mortification, coupled with exposure 
 to the cold, soon told upon his naturally delicate constitu- 
 tion, and aggravated a liver complaint from which he had 
 previously suffered, and from which he was never afterwards 
 free. It was here that, kneeling before a crucifix, he wrote 
 the Rule of his order, and here that he composed a large 
 part of his first important work, the New Essay on the 
 Origin of Ideas. In July, 1828, he left Domodossola, and 
 after trying in vain to recover his health by using the 
 mineral waters of Recoaro, he paid a visit to his mother at 
 Rovereto, and then started southward, in order to pursue his 
 studies and purposes under the influence of a more genial 
 climate. He reached Rome on the 25th of November, and 
 remained there till March, 1830. During this interval he 
 made the acquaintance of many distinguished men, received 
 great encouragement from the pope, Pius VIIL, to pursue 
 his philosophical studies, took steps toward obtaining the 
 approval of the Holy See for his new order, and printed his 
 Neiv Essay {Nuovo Saggio suW Origine delle Idee), which 
 established his reputation as the ablest Catholic philosopher 
 of his time, and which was almost immediately introduced 
 as a text-book into many schools and seminaries, even, it 
 should seem, into those under the control of the Jesuits.
 
 xxxii THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINL 
 
 Just as the year 1820 closed Rosmini's apprenticeship, 
 if the expression may be allowed, so the year 1830 closed 
 his journeymanship, in philosophy, His New Essay was 
 his masterpiece, in the old and proper signification of that 
 much-abused term. The rest of his life divides itself natu- 
 rally into three periods : the first, from 1830 to 1837, during 
 which he worked out into clearness the plan of his great 
 system of truth, and partly executed it, at the same time 
 labouring to find a footing for his order ; the second, from 
 1837 to 1848, during which he enjoyed as much happiness 
 as usually falls to the lot of mortals, all his plans seeming 
 to promise realization ; and the third, from 1848 to 1855, 
 during which, though he pursued his schemes with un- 
 abating vigour, he was doomed to drink to the dregs the 
 bitter cup of misrepresentation and slander, mixed for 
 him by those whose influence his good threatened. But in 
 all periods his character remained the same, 
 
 In May, 1830, Rosmini returned to Domodossola, and, 
 though still infirm in health, resumed his life of privation. 
 His hopes, however, were high, and new ways of useful- 
 ness began to open up to him. Having received, toward the 
 end of the year, an invitation to found a house of his order 
 at Trent, he betook himself thither, and from then until 1834 
 he lived partly in that city and partly at Domodossola, 
 largely devoted to the care of his nascent order. While 
 thus labouring to educate men for the Church, he was still 
 occupied with the problems of her philosophical and disci- 
 plinary reform ; for, though a zealous Catholic, he was too 
 clear-sighted and too single-minded not to be alive to her 
 unfortunate condition. In these years, accordingly, he wrote 
 his Principles of Moral Science, part of his (still unpublished) 
 Supernatural Anthropology, and (in 1832) his now famous 
 Five Wounds of Holy Church.
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINL XXXlll 
 
 In 1834 he was called by the clergy and people of 
 Rovereto, his native city, to take charge of the Congregation 
 of St. Mark's there. He accepted with reluctance ; but, 
 once on duty, he laboured with so much zeal and acceptance 
 as to rouse the opposition of the Austrian Government, 
 which dreaded his Italian and papal leanings. Being there- 
 by hampered in his efforts to improve the moral and spiritual 
 welfare of his parishioners, he resigned his charge in Octo- 
 ber, 1835, and at once returned to his previous mode of life. 
 But the Austrian Government, having once had its attention 
 called to his work in Rovereto, began to look with suspicion 
 upon his efforts generally, and to endeavour to counterarct 
 them. With this purpose it first forbade all connection 
 between his house at Trent and any foreign house, meaning 
 the one at Domodossola, and finally succeeded in breaking 
 it up altogether. The natural hostility of the Austrian 
 Government to anything savouring of Ultramontanism was, 
 in Rosmini's case, sharpened by the influence of the Jesuits 
 and their friends, who saw in his enterprises possible dangers 
 to their order. If at Vienna they accused him of Ultra- 
 montanism, at Rome they charged him with heresy, chiefly 
 with the view of inducing the Holy See to withhold its 
 approval from his proposed order. From that time until 
 now the persecution of Rosmini and his followers at the 
 hands of the Jesuits has never ceased even for a moment. 
 Freed from parochial duties, Rosmini, during the years 
 ^^1^-17 ^ nioved a good deal from place to place, trying to 
 secure a footing and sympathy for his order, and to defend the 
 groundwork of his philosophy, which was already vigorously 
 attacked, not only by the Jesuits and their friends, but also 
 by learned men of rationalistic or anti-Catholic tendencies.* 
 
 * Rosmini, it should never be forgotten, was a staunch supporter of papal 
 infallibility and authority, temporal as well as spiritual. He was, indeed, an 
 extreme Ultramontane.
 
 XXxiv THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINL 
 
 In these years he was able to found a mission in England, 
 and also to establish, at the Sacra of St. Michele, near 
 Turin, a religious house, to which he transferred, for a time, 
 the novitiate of his order. His most formidable opponent 
 in philosophy was Count Mamiani, of Pesaro, a zealous 
 Italian patriot, at that time living as an exile in Paris. It 
 was in reply to this gifted man's criticisms that he wrote 
 the large volume now familiarly known as the Rinnovamento, 
 which may be regarded as a supplement, and a most impor- 
 tant one, to his New Essay. By this work Mamiani was 
 convinced of his errors, a fact which he has acknowledged 
 in the most generous terms. 
 
 In 1837 Rosmini, tired of Austrian surveillance, took up 
 his abode at Stresa, a charming little town on the western 
 shore of Lago Maggiore, and here he remained during the 
 rest of his life, going abroad only when business of extra- 
 ordinary moment called him. For the eleven following 
 years he enjoyed as much happiness as usually falls to the 
 lot of humanity. His institution, in spite of bitter opposition, 
 received, in 1839, the formal approval of Pope Gregory XVI., 
 his old and steadfast friend, and continued to increase in 
 strength and numbers. He was able to pursue his studies 
 with vigour, to prepare a large number of volumes for the 
 press,* and to work out with great clearness the plan of his 
 whole system. He was surrounded by loving and admiring 
 friends, such as Manzoni,t Tommaseo, Gustavo Cavour, 
 brother of the statesman, Bonghi, etc. ; visited by the wise 
 and great of many nations; and elected member of numerous 
 academies at home and abroad, not to speak of other 
 honours. He experienced what few men ever know, the 
 
 * See list of Rosmini's works in Bibliography. 
 
 t Manzoni's Dialogue on Invention is written altogether in the spirit of 
 Rosmini's philosophy.
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. XXXV 
 
 delight of exercising every one of his faculties to the fullest 
 extent for the sake of the highest aims he could conceive. 
 
 Toward the end of this period his philosophy was 
 violently attacked by Vincenzo Gioberti, the great priest- 
 patriot and patriot-philosopher of Italy, in a work entitled 
 The Philosophical Errors of Antonio Rosinini. Rosmini 
 replied with great calmness, dignity, and effect, and Gioberti 
 lived to admit that he had altogether misjudged him. This 
 was in 1848, that year of so many changes, when Italy 
 was struggling to free herself from the bonds of the hated 
 Austrian. The position which Rosmini assumed in this 
 struggle, and his efforts to bring it to the conclusion he 
 desired, show, in a very marked way, how consistent he was 
 in his devotion to the interests of the Catholic religion. He 
 is usually spoken of as one of the initiators of the move- 
 ment which ended in the emancipation and union of Italy, 
 and in a certain sense he deserves to be so considered. 
 Nevertheless, the freedom and unity which Italy has now 
 actually attained were, of all things, those which he least 
 desired and most earnestly laboured to prevent. It is true 
 that he sincerely longed to see Italy delivered from the 
 Austrian, but, like a good, consistent Catholic, he hoped 
 that this deliverance would result in placing the country 
 under the control of the pope. It was this longing and 
 this hope that stirred up the interest which he felt in the 
 political movements of that troubled time, and induced him 
 to take part in them. If his efforts were, from his point 
 of view, most unfortunate, leading to a result exactly the 
 opposite of what he desired, that was no fault of his. 
 
 When, in 1846, Pius IX. ascended the papal throne, and, 
 new to his position, began to show signs of liberalism, Italy 
 felt as if her day of regeneration had come, and the Vicar 
 of Christ had once more taken the lead in civilization.
 
 XXXVl THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINL 
 
 This went so far that when, in 1S48, for the purposes of 
 concerted action, a movement was set on foot to bring 
 about a confederation among the states of Italy, there was 
 a pretty general understanding that the pope should be 
 its perpetual president No proposal could better have 
 accorded with Rosmini's plans and wishes, and he at once 
 felt that his Constitution according to Social Justice, the 
 plan of which he had sketched out some seventeen years 
 before, was about to be realized. He was, therefore, exceed- 
 ingly desirous that the pope should heighten the prestige of 
 the Holy See by taking a prominent part in the emancipa- 
 tion of Italy. Great, accordingly, was his disappointment 
 when the pope, in an allocution, declared his intention of 
 taking no part in the war against Austria, on the ground 
 that, being the common father of all the faithful, he could 
 not consistently make war on any of them. Rosmini, 
 seeing both that this argument had a certain force, and 
 that, having once been publicly announced, it could not 
 again be withdrawn, was more eager than ever to see the 
 proposed confederation effected, for the reason that, inas- 
 much as the power of making peace and war would then 
 rest with the federal congress, and not with the princes 
 whose states were represented in it, the papal troops might 
 engage in an offensive war, and yet the pope, no longer 
 responsible for their action, be able to go on declaring him- 
 self the prince of peace and the father of charity. Rosmini 
 did everything in his power to prevent the pope from 
 placing himself meanwhile in opposition to the political 
 aspirations of his subjects and of Italy, and when the 
 Romans, impatient of dictation, at last demanded a consti- 
 tution, in order that they might have some voice in the 
 management of their own affairs, he wrote out and for- 
 warded to Rome a copy of his Constitution according to
 
 ■ THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. XXXvil 
 
 Social Justice. His purpose in this was to prevent the 
 granting of a constitution on the French model, a possi- 
 bihty which he dreaded above everything. The Constitution 
 arrived too late to be of any service ; but Rosmini shortly 
 afterwards published a somewhat enlarged copy of it. 
 About the same time also, he gave to the world his Five 
 Wounds of Holy Church, written as early as 1832. The 
 immediate aim of the former work was to induce the Italian 
 states to adopt constitutions practically conferring all 
 authority on the Church and the nobility ; that of the latter, 
 to induce the Church herself to submit to such reforms as 
 would enable her to exercise her authority more freely. 
 The ultimate aim of both was to procure for the pope an 
 inalienable preponderance in the government of Italy, and 
 to make Catholicism a leading article in her constitution. 
 
 It was very shortly after the publication of these works 
 that an opportunity was offered to Rosmini of performing 
 an active part in the affairs whose course he had tried to 
 influence. The Piedmontese Government, needing, for the 
 prosecution of the Austrian war, the countenance and aid 
 of the pope, offered Rosmini, whose influence in Rome was 
 supposed to be great, an appointment as special envoy to the 
 Holy See, in order to obtain these objects. Rosmini, think- 
 ing that in such a position he might subserve the interests 
 of the Church, accepted the mission with readiness. Un- 
 fortunately, however, his views of its nature and purpose 
 were very different from those of the Government which 
 appointed him. What the latter contemplated was an 
 armed alliance of princes capable of offering immediate 
 resistance to the Austrians ; what Rosmini meant to 
 labour for was a permanent confederation of states, with the 
 pope as ex-officio president. The Government, however, was 
 induced b}- Giobcrti to adopt for a moment Rosmini's plan,
 
 XXXVlll THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. 
 
 and, with a vague understanding to this effect, the latter 
 started on his mission. 
 
 On his arrival at Rome Rosmini was most graciously 
 received by the pope, appointed a consultor of the Congre- 
 gation of the Index, and promised a cardinal's hat. Indeed, 
 at first everything seemed to augur success. Meanwhile, 
 however, the Piedmontese Government having, on reflection, 
 become conscious that its purposes were incompatible with 
 those of Rosmini, delayed sending him instructions. In 
 spite of this, he at once began to carry out with vigour the 
 object of his mission, as he was fain to understand it. 
 Finally, the Piedmontese Government, fearing that his plan, 
 which was approved by the pope and the Duke of Tuscany, 
 might prove successful, sent him instructions to abandon it 
 and confine himself to the project of an armed alliance. 
 Rosmini remonstrated ; but finding the Government firm, 
 and the pope's minister, the unfortunate Rossi, in direct 
 opposition to him, he resigned his mission, having held it 
 for seven weeks, and devoted himself entirely to the cause 
 of the pope and the Church. The effect of Rosmini's 
 influence upon the former had been to prevent him from 
 listening to the proposal for an armed alliance, and to 
 confirm him in his resolution to take no direct part in the 
 war. 
 
 The result of his adherence to this resolution was to 
 bring about a crisis, which began with the foul assassination 
 of minister Rossi and ended in the pope's being obliged to 
 flee from Rome and take refuge at Gaeta, in the territory of 
 Naples. In the brief interval which elapsed between these 
 events, the Romans endeavoured to compel the pope to 
 appoint a Liberal ministry, and suggested Rosmini, whom 
 they believed to represent the views of patriotic Piedmont, 
 as one of its members. The pope, reluctantly yielding to
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. XXXIX 
 
 force, nominated the ministry desired, conferring on Ros- 
 mini the presidency of it, with the portfolio of pubhc 
 instruction. Had Rosmini had as much force as purity of 
 character, and been as brilliant in action as in thought, there 
 is no doubt that here an occasion was offered to him for 
 realizing his most cherished schemes, and, to a large extent, 
 deciding the future fortunes of his country. But his almost 
 morbidly scrupulous conscience, his sense of incapacity, and, 
 more than all, his fear that his appointment had been made 
 under pressure and would place him in a false position 
 with the people, induced him to decline the nomination and 
 to keep himself out of the way. For whatever reason, his 
 influence with the pope ceased from that moment. Never- 
 theless, he continued to watch with interest the course of 
 events ; and when, a few days later, the pope fled in disguise 
 to Gaeta, Rosmini followed him, for the purpose of aiding 
 him in his difficulties. At Gaeta he found himself in a very 
 difficult position, unable to influence the pope or the course 
 of events, and exposed to the malign suspicions of Antonelli 
 and the party then in favour. He was finally rendered so 
 uncomfortable that he left Gaeta, betaking himself to Naples, 
 in order to superintend the printing of certain ascetic works. 
 By this step he left the field open to his enemies, who were 
 not slow to profit by the advantage. With the aid of the 
 Neapolitan Government, which, for reasons of its own, per- 
 secuted him during the whole time he remained within the 
 limits of its jurisdiction, they succeeded in calling at Naples 
 an irregular meeting of the Congregation of the Index, to 
 examine and pronounce upon his recently published works, 
 the Constitution according to Social Justice and TJie Five 
 Woimds of Holy Church. Though a consultor of said 
 Congregation, Rosmini did not hear of this meeting, or of 
 its decree prohibiting these works, until several months after-
 
 xl- THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. 
 
 wards. Even when he returned to Gaeta and with great 
 difficulty obtained an audience of the pope, the latter 
 merely remarked that the two works were under examina- 
 tion, without dropping a hint that he had already signed the 
 decree prohibiting them. 
 
 Shortly afterwards, Rosmini, treated contemptuously by 
 the members of the pope's suite and annoyed in every 
 possible way by the Neapolitan Government, left Neapolitan 
 territory, and, after a brief visit to Monte Cassino, withdrew 
 to Albano, where he remained several months. Here he 
 received the news of the prohibition of his two political 
 works, and knew that his enemies had succeeded in their 
 most malignant purposes. The cardinal's robes which the 
 pope had ordered him to prepare, he was destined never to 
 wear. 
 
 The way in which Rosmini accepted what was meant to 
 be his disgrace, conscious as he must have been of its source, 
 was highly characteristic. He not only submitted to it 
 without protest, but rejoiced in it as a divine dispensation, 
 sent to test the strength and sincerity of his fidelity to the 
 dictates of the Holy See. Though he knew that his two 
 books had not been prohibited on account of any heretical 
 opinions contained in them, he offered to withdraw them 
 from circulation. This, however, was deemed unnecessary. 
 His enemies had succeeded in surrounding his name with an 
 odour of heresy, and they were satisfied. He shortly after- 
 wards returned to his home at Stresa, to resume his former 
 life, sadder, wiser, saintlier than before. He lived but seven 
 years more. During these he devoted himself almost ex- 
 clusively to the care of his institute and the composition of 
 works forming part of his great system of truth. The 
 convincing nature of this system, its coherency, and the 
 rapidity with which it was now approaching logical com-
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. xH 
 
 pletion, once more roused the hostility of his enemies, whose 
 purposes, besides, had been somewhat baffled by his hearty 
 submission to the decree prohibiting his two patriotic works. 
 Thinking that, having taken the first step, they would find 
 the rest more easy, they began a systematic process of 
 calumniation, giving out that Rosmini's works were full of 
 all kinds of heresies and damnable doctrines, and not even 
 taking care to see that their accusations were compatible with 
 each other. Their object was to accomplish by mere reiter- 
 ation what would have been impossible by evidence fairly 
 adduced, namely, to make clear to the pope that Rosmini was 
 a heretic and a man dangerous and hostile to the cause of 
 the Holy See. To their dismay, however, they soon found 
 out that they had overshot their mark. The pope knew Ros- 
 mini personally, and before that knowledge calumny fell 
 dead. Besides, the pope, being now restored to his throne 
 and free to think for himself, saw that he had deeply 
 wronged Rosmini. Accordingly he resolved to make what 
 reparation was in his power, by giving him a fair hearing. 
 Indeed, the whole of the pope's conduct in regard to Ros- 
 mini and his works from this time forth was thoroughly 
 judicious and praiseworthy. He first enjoined silence on 
 Rosmini's enemies, and then had the whole of his published 
 works submitted to the most careful scrutiny. This is not 
 the place to relate the story of this most interesting process,* 
 which lasted for nearly four years (1851-1854). Suffice it 
 to say that at the end of that time the Congregation of the 
 Index met, and, with the pope in person presiding, declared 
 that all the works of Antonio Rosmini-Scrbati, lately sub- 
 jected to examination, were to be dismissed as free from 
 
 * See Paoli's Vita, already referred to ; Cmni Biografici di Antonio Ros- 
 mini (Milan, 1855) ; Antonio Rosmini e la Civilta Catlolica dinanzi alia 
 S. Congregaz. deW Indite, by G. Buroni (Turin, iSSo).
 
 xlii THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. 
 
 censure, and that, on account of said examination, no 
 obloquy should attach either to their author or to the insti- 
 tution founded by him, " de vitae laudibus et singularibus in 
 ecclesiam promeritis." The pope then enjoined perpetual 
 silence on all Rosmini's enemies, whose fury, in consequence, 
 knew no bounds, and from that day to this has not ex- 
 hausted itself.* No doubt, Rosmini's satisfaction was 
 great ; but he did not live long to enjoy it. He died the 
 death of a saint, at Stresa, on the ist of July, 1855, not without 
 suspicion of having been poisoned.! Though he laboured 
 assiduously to the last day of his life, sometimes employing 
 even two amanuenses, he was compelled at last to leave 
 unfinished many important works, among them, unfor- 
 tunately, the Theosophy, which was to be the crown and 
 keystone to his whole system, and which remains a colossal 
 fragment. 
 
 A list of Rosmini's works, with their dates of publication 
 and arranged according to subjects, will be found upon 
 pp. lii.-lxxii., and a brief sketch of the nature of his philo- 
 sophy in the Introdiictioji. A few words may be said here 
 regarding his person and the institute founded by him. 
 
 His person is thus described by his biographer, who 
 knew him well. " He was of middle stature, lithe, and, with 
 the exception that the head seemed too large for the body, 
 
 * During the lifetime of Pius IX., these enemies, though as disobedient as 
 they dared to be, were kept in check by repeated warnings and injunctions of 
 silence ; but since the accession of Leo. XIII. to the papal throne, they have 
 had full scope, and now freely repeat all the old accusations, which the sentence of 
 the Congregation of the Index ought to have buried for ever. Thus there is 
 growing up a literature of calumny very far from edifying. Fortunately it is 
 defeating its own ends. 
 
 t His remains rest in the crypt of the Church of the Holy Crucifix, which 
 he built. Over it is a handsome monument by Vela, representing Rosmini on 
 his knees, in the attitude in which he wrote the Rule of his order. In the 
 college attached to the church is the working part of his library, his manu- 
 scripts, and many inlcrc5.ling relics of him.
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. xllii 
 
 well proportioned. His forehead was high and expansive, 
 his hair almost black, his nose somewhat aquiline, his chin 
 slightly protruding, his complexion delicate, his eye full of 
 fire softened by an expression of bashful modesty, his lips 
 wreathed with a perpetual smile of benevolence. His 
 manners, rooted as they were in a fine nature carefully 
 developed by home education, were full of ease, dignity, and 
 kindness to all persons, of whatever rank in life." His face, 
 to judge from his portraits, must have been exceedingly 
 handsome, but there was a curious want of symmetry about 
 his head, which in form reminds us of those of the Medici 
 family, being apparently short from front to back, and of 
 what may perhaps be called the Etruscan type. 
 
 When we say that Rosmini was a saint and a thinker 
 of the very first order, we have given in brief the main 
 features of his character. Sainthood, as hitherto understood, 
 implies a living faith rejoicing in the consciousness of God, 
 a heart surcharged with love to God and all that He has 
 made, and a free, complete submission of the will to Him. 
 Faith, love, submission were to Rosmini but three aspects 
 of the same blessed act, of that holy and hallowing enthu- 
 siasm which was the mainspring of his life. His biographer, 
 indeed (vol. i. p. 84, n.), is careful to inform us that he 
 never was an enthusiast in the ordinary acceptation of that 
 term ; and this is true. Rosmini was never a Schivdnner, 
 gushing hysterically over the passing shows and gaudy 
 accidents of things ; but in the old Greek, Platonic noble 
 sense of the term {IvQovGiaGfxo^, from iv and 0£oc, inspi- 
 ration of God), he was an enthusiast of the first rank. He 
 knew little, indeed, of love (tpojQ) in the ordinary sense of 
 the word, that is, the desire to absorb and perpetuate a 
 good in its nature transient : hence, the tics of home and 
 family, as such, were never strung in him ; but his whole
 
 xliv THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. 
 
 nature was bathed in self-surrendering love to God, and 
 in what the author of Ecce Homo felicitously calls the 
 enthusiasm of humanity, the true Christian charity, which 
 seeketh not her own, but rejoiceth in the truth. God, man 
 as the image of God, and nature as the shadow of God, 
 were the objects of his love, and the contemplation of any 
 one of them was sufficient to move him to tears, and, in the 
 language of Wordsworth, to " thoughts that do lie too deep 
 for tears." His highest blessedness he found in rapt com- 
 munion with God, his chief happiness in cordial interchange 
 of thoughts and feelings with other pure souls, and his 
 keenest pleasure in repose of spirit among the lonely gran- 
 deurs of nature. His letters to his friends, especially those 
 written in the earlier part of his life, remind us of those of 
 Hegel to Holderlin and Schelling, and his poetry also has 
 a strong resemblance in tone to that of the great German 
 thinker.* As we have already said, this attitude of self- 
 surrendering love and faith was in Rosmini coupled with a 
 complete submission of his will to God through freedom. 
 In his Anthropology (Book iii., On Spirituality, p. 329) he 
 defines Freedom as " the faculty which determines the will 
 to a volition contrary to its own," whereas " Will is the 
 faculty which tends to a known object." 
 
 ^schylos had a profound insight when he wrote, " No 
 one is free save Zeus " (" 'EXtw^ijooc ya/j ovnq lari Trkr\v Aiog " 
 Pro7neth. Vinct., 50), and since his day many a one has felt 
 the direct conclusion from this to be, that whoever else wishes 
 to be free must seek to identify his will with that of the 
 supreme power. " Our wills are ours, to make them Thine," 
 says Tennyson. This was one of Rosmini's central doc- 
 
 • See Rosenkranz's Life of Hegel, pp. 62-80, and compare the poem on 
 pp. 78-80 with Rcismini's youthful effusion quoted on pp. 5-8 of Nicolo Tom- 
 maseo's Antonio Rostnini (Turin, 1S55).
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. xlv 
 
 trines, and it explains a great deal in his character. He 
 was not a man of executive ability, or indeed of enterprise 
 in the sphere of practical activity. Having surrendered his 
 will, he became entirely passive, waiting in complete faith 
 for the prompting of the Divine Spirit, before entering upon 
 any grave undertaking. This attitude of passivity was an 
 entirely conscious one with him, so much so that as early as 
 1825 he laid it down as the guide and principle of his life. 
 In his diary of that year he wrote : " I, most unworthy 
 priest, have resolved to shape my conduct in accordance 
 with two principles, which are these : 
 
 "(i) To devote myself seriously to setting myself free 
 from my most enormous vices [!] and purifying my soul 
 from the iniquity with which it has been loaded since my 
 birth, without going in search of other occupations or 
 enterprises for the good of my neighbour, feeling as I do 
 my utter powerlessness to do anything of myself for their 
 good. 
 
 " (2) Not to refuse any offices of charity toward 
 my neighbour, if ever Divine Providence shall offer or 
 present them to me, inasmuch as God is able to make use 
 of any instrument, and, therefore, even of me, for His pur- 
 poses ; and should this happen, I will preserve perfect in- 
 difference as to the nature of these offices, and perform those 
 laid upon me with the same fervour as if I had assumed 
 them of my own free will." 
 
 However we may regard such principles, it was, after 
 all, love and intellect, and not faith or submission of will, 
 that made Rosmini great ; and so closely, indeed, are the 
 two former elements bound up together in him, that 
 it is almost impossible to treat them separately. Love 
 deepened, without narrowing, intellect, and intellect 
 broadened, without attenuating, love. To his consciousness,
 
 xlvi THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. 
 
 more perhaps than to that of any other man that ever lived, 
 might be apphed the inimitable lines of Dante — 
 
 *' Light intellectual, filled full of love, 
 Love of true good, filled full of gladsomeness, 
 Gladsomeness transcending all things sweet." * 
 
 Light and love, distinguishing subtlety and combining 
 force, these are the fundamental characteristics of high 
 intelligence, and the balance of the two is the infinite joy 
 of contemplation which, as Aristotle says, we sometimes 
 enjoy, God always f (Metaph. A. 7). Both elements the 
 intellect of Rosmini possessed in a very high degree. His 
 surprising analytical subtlety, which reminds us of that of 
 Aristotle, enabled him to unravel perplexities of thought 
 that had puzzled centuries, while his synthetic power, 
 which never for an instant lost sight of the absolute whole 
 in the relative parts, made it possible for him to build up a 
 system of ordered truths which, had he lived to complete it, 
 would have in vain sought for an equal. True, his dog- 
 matic faith narrowed his field of vision, and consequently 
 his sympathies ; but this was in great measure atoned for 
 by the care with which he distinguished faith from science, 
 and the intense enthusiasm which the former lent to his 
 mind. 
 
 In regard to the institution founded by Rosmini, a few 
 words must suffice. Its proper title is the Institute of the 
 Brethren of Charity {Istituto dei Fratelli della Carita) ; but 
 its members are better known by the shorter name Ros- 
 minians. The fundamental idea of it is the principle of 
 passivity, already spoken of, and its aim the moral perfec- 
 
 * " Luce intellettual, piena d'amore, 
 Amor di vero ben, pien di letizia, 
 Letizia che trascende ogni dolzore." 
 
 ParadisOy c. xxx. 
 t " 'Hs T]fius TTore, 6 0eby aei " (1072 b, 25).
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. xlvii 
 
 tion of souls, through obedience to every law, human and 
 divine, natural and revealed. Moral perfection implies and 
 supplements the two other forms of perfection, that of 
 essence and that of intelligence, and is synonymous with 
 holiness.* The essential part of the life of the Brother of 
 Charity is, therefore, the elective or contemplative, whose 
 aim is his own perfection ; but this only prepares him for 
 the assumptive or active part, whose aim is the well-being 
 of others, and which he is bound to undertake, whenever he 
 feels himself called to it by God, without any regard to his 
 own preferences. The principle of all action is to be charity^ 
 material, moral, intellectual, "the love of the good, of all 
 the good." 
 
 The Brethren of Charity undergo a two years' novitiate, 
 take the three monastic vows of obedience, poverty, and 
 chastity, wear no distinguishing habit, and conform to the 
 laws of the country in which their lot may happen to be 
 cast. Each retains a sort of title to his own property, but 
 makes a continual sacrifice of it, by disposing of it as the 
 general of the order enjoins. The order, as such, owns no 
 property. 
 
 The Institute of Charity, containing, as it does, both 
 clerical and lay members, and claiming no special vocation, 
 is the most considerable attempt that has been made to 
 adapt the principles of Catholic Christianity and monasti- 
 cism to the needs of the present time. If its success has 
 not been marked, this is due, not to any defect in its 
 principles or constitution, but to the determined opposition 
 which, from the first, it encountered at the hands of that 
 party in the Church whose chief aim is despotic power, such 
 as can be maintained only through distrust of human in- 
 telligence and the substitution of blind obedience for the 
 
 * See §§ 212, 219.
 
 xlviii THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. 
 
 conviction that comes of insight. In spite, however, of all 
 unscrupulous opposition, the Institute is in a fairly prosperous 
 condition, and, if its members are not numerous, those who 
 have entered it are among the most human-hearted men 
 and the truest Christians that the present world has to 
 show. They are almost exclusively Italians or English- 
 men. The order has two novitiates, one at Domodossala 
 in Piedmont, and one recently removed from Rugby to 
 Wadhurst in Sussex. It has also several colleges and 
 religious houses in various parts of Italy and England. 
 
 Such is a very meagre account of the life of one of the 
 most remarkable men of this century, a man who, without 
 courting publicity or fame, laboured for forty years, with all 
 the force that was in him, to do the good as he understood 
 it. The good which he sought to do met with many 
 obstacles in his lifetime, and many more since that came to 
 a close ; but his order still keeps alive his spirit of piety, 
 hope, and charity, and his works, in spite of all wilful mis- 
 interpretation, calumny, and denunciation, are slowly, but 
 surely, extending their influence in every direction where 
 influence is desirable. If a certain hostile body of men 
 sharing his own creed have made it one of their special 
 aims to oppose his good and his truth, their loss is greater 
 than his, and this they will in time discover to their cost. 
 As for us who do not share his creed or its intolerance, we 
 can, with a charity even greater than his, overlook the fact 
 that he held it, and, in spite of it, do him justice. We may 
 differ with him in many, even fundamental, views and 
 beliefs ; we may think he wasted his powers in pursuing 
 impossible aims ; we may admit that he was in certain 
 things far too credulous ; we may see that he did not under- 
 stand or appreciate some of the most manly and humane 
 movements of his time ; we may feel that he was frequently
 
 THE LIFE OF ANTONIO ROSMINI. xllX 
 
 unjust in his estimate of men who differed with him in 
 opinion ; we may even doubt the propriety of some of his 
 acts ; but we need not, and certainly shall not, thereby be 
 prevented from admiring his purity of heart, his unselfish- 
 ness and tenderness, his singleness and indivertibility of 
 aim, the vastness of his knowledge, and the penetrating force 
 of his intellect. Neither need we be deterred by theologic 
 prejudice from examining his works, and respectfully 
 accepting the truth they contain. By such acceptance we 
 shall be hastening the justice which time is certain, sooner 
 or later, to accord to him and them.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 The following Bibliography is divided into two parts, 
 the first comprehending Rosmini's own writings, the 
 second, works bearing on Rosmini's life and philosophy. 
 The former is, I believe, tolerably complete, although I 
 have not been able to give the dates of all the editions of 
 the various works. The latter, although I have spared no 
 labour on it, is, I fear, far from complete. I ought, more- 
 over, to state that I have omitted from it many essays and 
 criticisms of whose existence I was well aware. I could 
 not bring myself to search through the Civilta Cattolica and 
 other Catholic journals for articles whose aim is not truth 
 or clear statement, but calumny, in the interest of religious 
 dogmatism and party power. 
 
 Many of the books, whose titles I have given in whole 
 or in part, I have not seen. Of those which I have been 
 able to read or examine I have given full particulars, num- 
 ber of pages, etc. I shall be particularly grateful to any 
 one who will in any way aid me in making this first 
 attempt at a Rosminian bibliography more complete. 
 
 As there is much probability that Rosmini's works will 
 one day appear in English, I have translated their titles, 
 leaving those of the rest in the original Italian.
 
 Hi BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 A. WORKS BY ANTONIO ROSMINI-SERBATI. 
 
 Introductory. 
 
 1. 0)1 the Purposes of the Author (Degli Studi dell 
 Autore. Discorso a' suoi Amici e a tutti quelli che gli 
 sono benevoli e indulgenti). Casuccio, Casale, 1850, 8vo, 
 pp. 226. 
 
 2. The Characteristics of Philosophy (I Caratteri della 
 Filosofia). Originally published as prefaces to the two 
 volumes of Opuscoli Filosofici, Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 
 1827-28 ; afterwards by Casuccio, Casale, 1850 ; 8vo, pp. 26. 
 
 3. Philosophical System (Sistema Filosofico). Originally 
 written for Cesare Cantu's Storia Universale, and inserted 
 in the volume, Documenti sui Sistevii moderni, Piomba 
 Turin, 1845 ; reproduced by Fumi, Montepulciano, 1846, 
 and by Casuccio, Casale, 1850, 8vo, pp. 84. There is an 
 edition, with an introduction and marginal notes by Pro- 
 fessor C. P. Paganini, printed by Benedini-Guidotti, Lucca, 
 1853, 8vo, pp. X., 156. This work was translated into 
 German with the rest of Cantu's Storia Universale, and 
 also by Biberbach, G. G. Manz, Regensburg, 1879. This is 
 also the work translated in the present volume. 
 
 4. 0)1 the Essoice of Cog}iitio)i (SulT Essenza del Cono- 
 scerc : Lettera a Benedetto Monti). Published in the 
 Prag))iatologia Cattolica, Lucca, 1847 ; Casuccio, Casale, 
 1830; 8vo, pp. 13. 
 
 5. How to co)idiict Philosophical Studies (Come si pos- 
 sano condurre gli Studi della Filosofia). First printed in
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Hli 
 
 the Abbe Fontana's Manuale di Editcazione Umana, Milan, 
 1834 5 reproduced at Citta di Castello, 1845 ; Casuccio, 
 Casale, 1850; 8vo, pp. 15. 
 
 6. On the Classification of Philosophical Systems and the 
 Dispositions necessary for arriving at Truth (Sulla Classifi- 
 cazione de' Sistemi Filosofici e sulle Disposizioni necessarie 
 a ritrovare il Vero). This consists of four letters — the 
 first (Rovereto, October ist, 1825) to Luigi Bonelli, first 
 printed in the Opuscoli Filosofici, vol. ii., Bonlardi-Pogliani, 
 Milan, 1828; the second (Stresa, August 12th, 1845) to 
 Alessandro Pestalozza, first printed in that writer's Elenicnti 
 di Filosofia, Milan, 1850; and the third (Turin, December 
 26th, 1836) and fourth (Turin, February 6th, 1837) to 
 Baldassarre Poli, first printed in the Progresso, No. 33, 
 Naples, 1837, then in the Raccoglitore, Milan, 1837. All 
 four reproduced by Casuccio, Casale, 1850, 8vo, pp. 26. 
 
 7. On the Language of Philosophy and sojne Objections 
 made to the Philosophy of the Author (Sulla Lingua Filoso- 
 fica e di alcune Obbiezioni fatte alia Filosofia dell' Autore). 
 This consists of five letters — the first (Trent, December 5th, 
 1 831) to Pietro Orsi, on The Language of Philosophy and 
 some Objections proposed by a German Journal, first printed 
 in the Messagier Tirolese, December, 1831, then in the 
 Prose Ecclesiastiche, Lugano, 1834 ; the second, a fragment 
 without date or address, on The Primitive Judgment ; the 
 third (Stresa, January 14th, 1842) to Don Paolo Barone, 
 on The Diverse Forms of Being, first printed in Barone's 
 pamphlet Sulle Dottri?te Filosofiche di Vincenzo Giobcrti, 
 Turin, 1843 ; the fourth (Stresa, April 23rd, 1842) to Carlo 
 F. Sola, on The Way to avoid Pantheism, first published in 
 the Messagier Toriuese, No. 43, 1842 ; and the fifth (Stresa, 
 March i6th, 1846) to Alessandro Pestalozza. on the (question
 
 Hv BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Can Being be predicated univocally of God and Created 
 Tilings ? published by Pestalozza in his Elementi di Filo- 
 sofia, Milan, 1845, 1849. All five were printed by Casuccio, 
 Casale, 1850, Svo, pp. 35. 
 
 8. On French Eclecticism (SuU' Eclettismo Francese, 
 Lettera al Dottore Luigi Gentili, Turin, February 13th, 
 1837), printed in t\\Q Indicatore, Milan, 1837; Propagator e, 
 Turin, 1837 ; Casuccio, Casale, 1850. 
 
 The above eight treatises are printed in one volume, under the title 
 Introdnzione alia Filosofia, Casuccio, Casale, 1850, Svo, pp. 470. 
 
 CLASS I. 
 Ideology and Logic. 
 
 9. Neiv Essay on the Origin of Ideas (Nuovo Saggio 
 suir Origine delle Idee). First printed by Salvucci, Rome, 
 1830, 4 vols. i2mo; then by Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 
 1836-37, and 1838, 3 vols. 8vo ; Batelli,* Naples, 1842-43; 
 Piomba, Turin, 185 1 ; and finally, with an excellent index, 
 by Bertolotti, Intra, 1875, 3 vols. Svo, pp. Ixiv., 429, 539, 
 485. The first volume was rendered into French by the 
 Abbe C. M. Andre. Waille, Paris, 1844. 
 
 This work was begun in 1825 at Rovereto, continued at Milan 
 in 1826, and finished at Domodossola in 1828. For analysis see 
 under §§ 10, 15. 
 
 10. The Restoration of Philosophy in Italy (II Rinnova- 
 mento della Filosofia in Italia, proposto dal Conte Terenzio 
 Mamani della Rovere ed esaminato da Antonio Rosmini- 
 
 * It may be remarked that the Batelli edition of Rosmini's works, which 
 consists of fourteen handsome volumes, was really pirated and printed without 
 Rosmini's consent. It is, nevertheless, a very handy edition of the principal 
 works.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Iv 
 
 Serbati). Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1836, 1841, Svo, pp. 704 ; 
 Batelli, Naples, 1843. 
 
 See above, p. xxxiv., and below, under § 10. This work, which 
 may be regarded as a supplement to the New Essay, was written in a 
 very few months. The Dialogue entitled Mosddni was published 
 separately. 
 
 11. Ai'istotle Explained and Examined (Aristotele Es- 
 posto ed Esaminato). Societa Editrice di Libri di Filosofia, 
 Turin, 1857, 8vo, pp. 6^6. This work is sadly disfigured 
 by typographical errors. 
 
 Though on several occasions unjust to Aristotle, Rosmini has in 
 this work furnished one of the best criticisms of the works and system 
 of that philosopher. The preface to the work was published separately 
 in the Polia?itea Cattolica, Turin, 1855. 
 
 12. The Idea (L'Idea). Bertolotti, Intra, 1869, 8vo, 
 pp. 268. This fragment is printed as the second half of the 
 fourth volume of the Theosophy (see No. 15), to which it 
 really does not belong. 
 
 13. Logic (Logica, Libri III.). Piomba, Turin, 1854 ; 
 Bertolotti, Intra, 1868 ; 8vo, pp. lix., 663, The last edition 
 has a most valuable index by Dr. de Vit. 
 
 The first book of this work treats of Assent, and is almost entirely 
 original ; the second, of the Theory of Inference ; and the third, of 
 The Criterion of Truth and Certaitity and oi Probability. 
 
 CLASS II. 
 
 Metaphysical Sciences. 
 
 14. Psychology (Psicologia). Miglio, No vara, 1846-48 
 (1850), 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 549, 796 ; Batelli, Naples. 
 
 This, perhaps the best of Rosmini's works, has for many years been 
 out of print. It is divided into ten books, of which the first treats of
 
 Ivi BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 the essence of the human soul ; the second, of certain properties of the 
 human soul ; the third, of the union of soul and body and their re- 
 ciprocal influence ; the fourth, of the simplicity of the human soul and 
 questions therewith connected ; the fifth, of the immortality of the 
 human soul and the death of man ; the sixth and seventh, of the 
 activity of the human soul ; the eighth and ninth, of the laws that 
 govern the activity of the human soul ; and the tenth, of the laws of 
 animality. Besides, the first volume contains a preface to the whole 
 of the metaphysical works and an appendix of 151 pages, On the 
 Opinions of Philosophers in regard to the Nature of the Soul, an 
 amplification and continuation of the first book of Aristotle's De 
 Aniind. 
 
 15. Theosophy (Teosofia). 5 vols. 8vo. Vols. I.-III. 
 Societa Editrice di Libri di Filosofia, Turin, 1859, 1863, 
 1864, pp. xvi., 727 ; X., 551 ; 435. Vols. IV., V, Bertolotti, 
 Intra, 1869, 1874, pp. 588, 6^6. 
 
 The plan of this posthumous work was several times recast in the 
 mind of the author, and the parts that remain do not all belong to 
 the same plan. The first volume contains three books — the first on 
 The Ontological Problem j the second on the Categories, the supreme 
 classification of beings ; and the third on Being in its Unity. The 
 second and third volumes treat of Being in its Trinity (L'Essere 
 Trino). The fourth is made up of two distinct works, The Divine in 
 Nature, dedicated to Alessandro Manzoni, and the treatise on The 
 Idea, already named, No. 12. The fifth volume deals with The Real, 
 that is, the most difficult problems of space, matter, and body and its 
 movements, and may be considered as a fragment of Cosmology. 
 Perhaps of all works written in modern times this is the most sug- 
 gestive. The Divine in Nature and the treatise on The Real furnish 
 many elements for a new WeltaiiscJiauung. An index to the first 
 three volumes by Severino Frati has just appeared, Paravia, Turin, 
 etc., 1881. 
 
 16. Historico-Critical Treatise on the Categories (Trattato 
 Storico-Critico delle Categoric). A small work, of the 
 nature of Trendelenburg's Geschichte der Kategorien lehre. 
 
 17. Dialectics {y,^. Dialettica). Begun on 5th December, 
 1846, and finished 26th June, 1847: never revised or 
 printed. 
 
 18. Theodicy (Teodicea, Libri III.). This work is made
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. ~ Ivii 
 
 up of parts written at different periods of the author's life. 
 The second book, under the title of Saggio dclla Divina 
 Provvidenza nel Governo dci Beni e del Mali teinporali, was 
 first printed by Visai, Milan, 1826, then at Mendrisio in 
 1839; the first and second appeared together, under tlie 
 same title, in the Opitscoli Filosojici, in 1827-28, and the 
 three together, with the title Teodicca, were printed by 
 Boniardi-Poghani, Milan, 1845, 8vo. There is an edition 
 printed by the Societa Editrice di Libri di Filosofia, Turin, 
 1857. 2 vols. i6mo, pp. XV., 215, 415. 
 
 On the contents of this work, see below, under § 1 88. 
 
 19. Vincenzo Gioberti and Pantheism (Vincenzo Gio- 
 berti e il Panteismo : Lezioni Filosofiche). Printed as a 
 reply to Gioberti's polemical work, Gli Errori Filosojici di 
 Antonio Rosniini, in the Filo-Cattolico, Florence, 1845 ; 
 Bonardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1846 ; Tramater, Naples, 1847 ; 
 with additions, Giusti, Lucca, 1853. 
 
 CLASS IIL 
 
 Philosophy of Morals and Right. 
 
 20. Principles of Moral Science (Principi delle Scienza 
 Morale). Milan, 1831 ; Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1837 ; 
 Batelli, Naples; Bertolotti, Intra, 1867 ; 8vo, pp. 127. 
 
 21. Comparative and Ci'itical History of the Systems that 
 treat of the Principle of Morals (Storia Comparativa e Critica 
 de' Sistemi intorno al Principio dclla Morale). Boniardi- 
 Pogliani, Milan, 1837 ; Batelli, Naples ; Bertolotti, Intra, 
 1867 ; 8vo, pp. 360. 
 
 These two works are in the Intra edition included in one \ohnne, 
 which has an excellent preface of twenty pages.
 
 Ivlii BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 22. Anthropology in aid of Moral Science (Antropologia 
 in Servigio della Scienza Morale, Libri IV.). Boniardi- 
 Pogliani, Milan, 1838 ; Batelli, Naples ; Miglio, Novara, 
 
 1847 ; 8vo. pp- 568. 
 
 This work, in spite of its title, might, with perfect propriety, be 
 placed under Class II., as preliminary to the Psychology. The first 
 book treats of Maft ; the second, of Anitnality ; the third, of 
 Spirituality ; and the fourth, of The Subject Man. It is one of the 
 best of Rosmini's works. 
 
 23. Treatise on the Conscience (Trattato della Coscienza 
 Morale). Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1839, 1844 (revised), 
 8vo, pp. 474 ; Batelli, Naples. 
 
 This work is quite as much theological as philosophical, and called 
 out much criticism, especially from the Jesuits. 
 
 24. Exposition of the Catholic Doctrine with reference to 
 Original Sin (Esposizione della Dottrina Cattolica intorno 
 al Peccato Originale). Printed in the Opuscoli Morally 
 Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1841. 
 
 25. The Notions of Shi and Fault Elucidated (Le 
 Nozioni di Peccato e di Colpa Illustrate). Boniardi- 
 Pogliani, Milan, 1842 and 1843. Two parts. Part I., 8vo, 
 pp. 80 ; Part II., 8vo, pp. 94. 
 
 Most of the copies of the second part of this work were withdrawn 
 from circulation by the author himself; but it has just been republished. 
 Only the first appears in the Opuscoli Morali, Milan, 1842. 
 
 26. On the Definition of the Moral Law and on the 
 Theory of Ideal Being (Sulla Definizione della Legge 
 Morale e sulla Teoria dell' Essere Ideale. Risposta alle 
 Osservazioni del R. P. Gius. L. Dmowski della C. d. G.). 
 Bellotti, Arezzo, 1841 ; Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1842, 
 8vo, pp. 51; Batelli, Naples.
 
 BIBLIOGRArHV. Hx 
 
 27. Reply to the Pretended Christian Ensebius (Risposta 
 al finto Eusebio cristiano). Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 
 1 841, 8vo, pp. 304, in Opuscoli Morali, 1843; and Batelli, 
 Naples. 
 
 This is the work which gave so much pleasure to Pope Gregory 
 XVI., who said that Rosmini, with blood in his veins, could hardly 
 have refrained from writing it. 
 
 28. On the Principle, The DOUBTFUL Law DOES NOT 
 BIND, and the Proper Application of it (Sul Principio, La 
 Legge dubbia non obbliga e sulla retta Maniera di Appli- 
 carla. Lettere di Antonio Rosmini-Serbati, con una Ris- 
 posta di Monsig. Scavini ed una Replica alia medesima). 
 Casuccio, Casale, 1850, 8vo, pp. 107 ; Pirotta, Milan, 185 1. 
 
 This volume contains letters to several persons, collected from 
 various periodicals, e.g. the Florilegio Cattolico di Fede e Palrla, and the 
 Pragmatalogia Cattolica of Lucca, years 1847-48. They were called 
 forth chiefly by attacks made upon Rosmini's Treatise on the Con- 
 science (No. 23). 
 
 29. Philosophy of Right (Filosofia del Diritto). Boni- 
 ardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1842, sq. ; Batelli, Naples ; Bertolotti, 
 Intra, 1865-66 (from the copy annotated by the author) ; 
 2 vols, 8vo, pp. 804, 1000. 
 
 CLASS IV. 
 
 Education and Methodology. 
 
 30. The Necessity of Cultivating Htmian Reason (Ne- 
 cessita di coltivare I'umana Ragione). A dissertation 
 written as early as 181 3, and never published. 
 
 31. On the Supreme Principle of Method and sonic of its
 
 Ix BinunGRAPIIY. 
 
 Applications in the Service of Ediication (Del Supremo 
 Principio della Metodica e di alcune sue Applicazioni in 
 Servigio dell' Educazione). Societa Editrice di Libri di 
 Filosofia, Turin, 1857 ; 8vo, pp. 365. 
 
 For the contents of this work, which is posthumous and incomplete, 
 see under § 244. 
 
 32. Essay on the Unity of Edncatioii (Saggio suU' Unita 
 deir Educazione). Tofani, Florence, 1826. Reproduced 
 in the Opuscoli Eilosofici, Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1827-28. 
 
 33. On Freedom of Instruction (Sulla Liberia dell' 
 Insegnamento). A series of fourteen articles published in 
 the Armo7iia of Turin in 1854. Never finished. 
 
 34. On the CaJise of the Errors into tvhich Young Men 
 so readily fall on leaving College, and the Way to prevent 
 them (Sulla Cagione del facile Traviare de' Giovanetti 
 usciti appena di Collegio e del Modo di ripararvi. Lettera 
 a Don Paolo Orsi). In the Cattolico, Lugano, 1836. A 
 second edition appeared in the Educatore Primario of 
 Turin, 1846. 
 
 CLASS V. 
 
 Political Philosophy, 
 
 35. On the Summary Cause ivhy Htiman Societies 
 stand and fall (Della Sommaria Cagione per cui stanno 
 e rovinano le umane Societa). Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 
 1837, 8vo, pp. 62 ; Batelli, Naples, 1842. 
 
 36. Society and its End (La Societa e il suo Fine). 
 Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1839, 8vo,pp. 392 ; Batelli, Naples, 
 1842.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixi 
 
 37. Essay on Statistics (Sulla Statistica. Ouesiti). 
 Printed in the Strenna, Non ti Scordar di Me. Redaelli, 
 Milan, 1844. 
 
 38. On Commmiism and Socialism (II Comunismo ed 
 il Socialismo. Ragionamenti). I.ibreria Nazionale, Naples, 
 1849 ; Fernando, Genoa, 1849, ^vo. 
 
 39. On the Definition of Wealth (Sulla Definizione della 
 Ricchezza). Printed in vol. ii. of the Opnscoli Filosofici, 
 under the title Saggio di Economia Politica sulla Defi- 
 nizione della Ricchezza. Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1827-28. 
 
 40. On Public Amnsevients (Sui Divertimenti Pubblici). 
 
 These six essays are now printed in one volume, bearing the title 
 of Filo'&ojia della Politica. Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1858, 8vo, 
 pp. 564. 
 
 41. Constitution in Accordance with Social Justice (Con- 
 stituzione Secondo la Giustizia Sociale). Redaelli, Milan, 
 1848, 8vo, pp. 112. With an appendix. On the Election of 
 Bishops, Ducci, Florence, 1848. 
 
 The appendix appeared, under the title Lettere Sopra le Elezioni 
 Vescovili a Clero e Popolo, in the Florilegio Cattolico di Fede e Patria^ 
 Libreria Nazionale, Naples, 1849. 
 
 42. The Five Wounds of Holy Chnrch (Le Cinque 
 Piaghc della Santa Chiesa. Trattato dedicato al Clero 
 Cattolico. Veladini, Lugano, 1847; Bastia, 1849; Genoa, 
 1849; Bartelli, Perugia, 1849 I Batelli, Naples. 
 
 The above two works were in 1849 prohibited by the Congregation 
 of the Ijidex (see Sketch of Rosmini's Life, p. xxxix. sq.). In opposition 
 to the latter Father Theincr wrote in German a scurrilous book, which 
 was translated into Italian under the title, Lettere storico-ciitiche 
 iiitorno alle Cijtque Piaghe del chiarissimo Sacerdote D. Antonio 
 Rosmini, scritte in AlemaJino dal P. Agosto Theiner, Sac. delP Oratorio 
 c tradotte in Italiano dull' ai>. D. Fcrd. Mansi. Cana\'accuoli, Naples,
 
 1X11 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 1849, 8vo, pp. 201. Rosmini wrote a reply, which was printed, but, out 
 of respect to the Congregation of the Index, never pubhshed. It 
 bore the following title : — 
 
 43. Reply to Father Thciner (Risposta al P. Theiner 
 contro il suo Scritto, intitolato : Lettere storico-critiche, etc). 
 Casuccio, Casale, 1850. 
 
 44. Poetical Doctrines of Dante's " De MonarcJda''' (Doc- 
 trine Politiche della Monarchia di Dante). A juvenile 
 work written in 181 3 and never published. 
 
 45. Political Economy (Economia Politica). A large 
 number of manuscripts never printed. The matter of part 
 of them was worked into the Philosophy of Politics. 
 
 46. The Construction of Civil Society (Costruzione 
 della Societa Civile). An unfinished work, begun in 1827 
 and intended to be divided into four books. A part of one 
 of these, written in 1848, exists in manuscript, bearing the 
 title Tribunals (Tribunali). 
 
 47. TJic Principal Politico-religions Questions of the 
 Day briefly answered {Le principali Questioni politico- 
 religiose della Giornata brevemente risolte). A series of 
 articles published in the Arnionia of Turin in 1853. 
 Their titles were : I. The State's Independence of the Church 
 {Independenza dello Stato dalla Chiesa) ; IL Separation 
 of the State from the CJiurch (Separazione dello Stato 
 dalla Chiesa ; III. Autonomy of tJie State (Autonomia dello 
 Stato) ; IV. Harmony between State and Church (Armonia 
 tra lo Stato e la Chiesa) ; V. Godless Laiv (La Legge 
 Atea) ; VL Civil Marriage (Matrimonio Civile) ; VII. 
 Liberty of Conscience (La Liberta di Coscienza) ; VIII. 
 Uniformity of the Laivs (Uniformita delle Leggi) ; IX. 
 Licence (La Licenza). The last was never printed, and 
 the series remained unfinished.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixiii 
 
 CLASS VI. 
 Philosophy of the Supernatural. 
 
 48. Siipernatural Anthropology (Antropologia Sopranna- 
 turale). Of this unpublished work, intended to be very- 
 extensive, only a few books were ever written. These bear 
 the title o{ Moral Anthropology. The second part, entitled 
 Theologica (Teologica), was meant to consist of six books, 
 bearing the following titles : — I. TJie Confines of Philoso- 
 phical and Theological Doctrine {writtQn \n 1832); II. Man 
 as perfectly constituted ; III. Man as sinfnl by Nature 
 (1833) ; IV. The Sanctified Ma7z (consisting of two parts, 
 of which the first is entitled Sacraments in general ; the 
 second, Sacraments of the Law of Grace in particular^ ; 
 V. Man as Redeemer ; VI. Woman, Mother of the Redeemer 
 (containing a chapter entitled On the Evidence rendered 
 by the Koran to the Virgin Mary). 
 
 49. Introduction to the Gospel according to St. JoJin 
 (Introduzione del Vangelo secondo Giovanni commentata. 
 Libri III). Begun in 1839 ^.nd continued until 1849. 
 Unione Tip.-Editrice, Turin, 1882, 8vo, pp. 310. 
 
 CLASS VII. 
 Ecclesiastical Prose, 
 
 50. Sermons (Discorsi Parrocchiali). Pirotta, Milan, 
 1837. These, with the exception of ten, had been pre- 
 viously printed at various times, e.g. the Discourse on 
 Pulpit Eloquence (Discorso dell' Eloquenza Ecclesiastica), 
 Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1832, Lugano, 1S34; Sermon
 
 Ixiv BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 preached on the occasion of taking possession of the Parish of 
 St. Mark's at Rovcreto (Discorso pronunziato in occasione 
 di prendere il possesso della Parocchia di S. Marco in 
 Rovereto), Marchesani, Rovereto, 1834; Discourse on the 
 Celibacy of Priests (Discorso sul Celibato Ecclesiastico), 
 printed in the Messagier Tirolese, Rovereto, 1835, in the 
 Annali delle Scienze Religiose di Roma, and in the Pro- 
 pugnator Religioso of Turin. All these discourses were 
 reprinted, along with several others, in one volume, bearing 
 the title of PrcacJiing (Predicazione), Boniardi-Pogliani, 
 Milan, 1843, 8vo, pp. 471. Among the additions was a 
 Panegyric of St. Philip Neri (Panegirico di S. Filippo 
 Neri), printed by Battaggia, Venice, 1821, and at Lugano 
 in 1834. 
 
 51. TJie Way to Catechize Dullards (Del Modo di cate- 
 chizzare gl' Idioti, libro di sant' Aurelio Agostino, vol- 
 garizzalo col testo a fronte). Marchesani, Rovereto, 1821 ; 
 Battaggia, Venice, 182 1, 8vo, pp. 83 ; Boniardi-Pogliani, 
 Milan ; Batelli, Naples, 1843. 
 
 52. Letters 011 Christian Instruction (Lettera sul Cris- 
 tiano Insegnamento). Addressed to Don Giovanni of Val 
 Vcstina. Marchesani, Rovereto, 1823; Florence, 1826; 
 Lugano, 1832 ; Milan, 1838 ; Batelli, Naples. 
 
 53. Rules of Christian Teaching (Regole della Dottrina 
 Cristiana dei fanciulli e delle fanciulle). Pirotta, Milan, 
 1837 (along with No. 55) ; Batelli, Naples, 1843. 
 
 54. Catechism arranged according to the Order of Ideas 
 (Catechismo disposto secondo I'Ordine delle Idee). Batelli, 
 Naples, 1849 (in the Opcrette Spirituali) ; Nistri, Pisa, 1854; 
 Ducci, Florence, 1856; Batelli, Naples, 1843; Bertolotti,
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixv 
 
 Intra, 1877, i6rao, pp. 166; Speirani, Turin, 1880 (in 
 Prose Ecclesiastiche). Translated into English by Agar, 
 and published with a dedication to Bishop UHathorne. 
 Richardson, London, 1849, 32mo, pp. 216. 
 
 55. Catechetical Instructions (Istruzioni Catechetiche). 
 These were copied down from Rosmini's viva voce exa- 
 minations while he was rector of St. Mark's in Rovereto, 
 and reduced to a compendium by Father Francis Puecher. 
 Printed (along with No. 53) by Pirotta, Milan, 1837. 
 
 These five works appeared in one volume, with the title of Cate- 
 chctics (Catechetica). Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1838, 8vo, pp. xiii., 462. 
 
 56. The Exerciser s Manual (Manuale dell' Esercitatore). 
 Batelli, Naples, 1844; Bertolotti, Intra, 1872, 8vo, pp. 294. 
 
 This volume is taken mostly from the works of St. Ignatius 
 Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, and forms a science of 
 ascetics. 
 
 57. Spiritual Lessons (Lezioni Spirituali). Appeared 
 originally with the title, Maxims of CJtristian Perfcctiori for 
 Persons of every Condition (Massime di Perfezione Cristiana 
 ad ogni Condizione di Persona). Salvucci, Rome, 1830 ; 
 Berina, Rome and Milan, 1831 ; Feraboli, Milan, 1833, 
 with an Appendix, An Easy Method of Meditating well 
 (Un Metodo Facile per ben meditare) and An Exercise for 
 the Examination of Conscience (Esercizio per I'Esame della 
 Coscienza) ; Marietti, Turin, 1837 (twice), with the title 
 Spiritual Lessons, and three new lessons ; Ibertis, Novara, 
 1840 (along with No. 88); Batelli, Naples, 1849 (i" ^'^e 
 Operette Spirit7iali) ; in French, Burdet, Annecy, 1836 ; in 
 English, Murray, Prior Park, 1836 ; Richardson, London, 
 1849. 
 
 A new translation in French has just appeared, with tlic title 
 Maxliiics dc Perfection Clirctienne ct Explicaiiou du Majj^infeat.
 
 Ixvi BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Traduites de I'ltalien, avec Preface et Appendice, par Cos. Tondini 
 de Ouarenghi. Socidtd Bibliographique, ^Maurice, Paris ; Burns and 
 Gates, London, 1882 ; i2mo, pp. viii., 104. 
 
 58. History of Love, drawn from tJie Holy Scriptures 
 (Storia dell' Amore, cavata dalle divine Scritture). Fera- 
 boH, Cremona, 1834; Batelli, Naples; in French, De 
 Perisse, Paris and Lyons, 1839. 
 
 These three works appeared in one \olume, entitled Ascetics 
 (Ascetica). Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1840, 8vo, pp. 54S. 
 
 59. Essay on Happiness (Saggio sopra la Felicita). 
 Marchesani, Rovereto, 1822, 8vo, pp. iii ; Florence, 1823, 
 \\'ith the title Essay on Hope, in Opposition to eertain Ideas 
 of Ugo Foscolds (Saggio sulla Speranza, contro alcune Idee 
 of Ugo Foscolo). Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1828; Batelli, 
 Naples. 
 
 60. Brief Exposition of the Philosophy of MelcJdor Gioja 
 (Breve Esposizione dclla Filosofia di Melchiorre Gioja). 
 Printed in vol. ii. of the Opnscoli Filosofici, Boniardi- 
 Pogliani, Milan, 1828. 
 
 61. Exannnation of tJie Fashionable Opinions of Melchior 
 Gioja (Esame delle Opinioni de Melchiorre Gioja in Favore 
 della Moda). In vol. vi. of the Meniorie di Modcna, 1824 ; 
 in vol. ii. of the Opnscoli Filosofici, Boniardi-Pogliani, 
 Milan, 1828 ; Batelli, Naples. 
 
 This was an attempt to expose the Epicureanism of Gioja, who 
 replied with considerable asperit)-, but is said to have died repentant. 
 The work pleased Pope Pius VIII. 
 
 62. Essay on the Religions Teaching of J. D, Roniagnosi 
 (Saggio sulla Dottrina Religiosa di G. D. Romagnosi). In 
 the Annali dclle Scicnrje religiose, Rome, 1837 ; Batelli, 
 Naples,
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixvil 
 
 6^. Fragments of a History of Impiety (Frammcnti di 
 una Storia dell' Empieta). Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1834; 
 Batclli, Naples. In French, with the title Fragment d'nnc 
 Histoire de rinipiete et Refutation dn Systeme religieux de 
 Benjamin Constant. Pelagaud, Lesne et Crozet, Lyons, 
 1837, 8vo, pp. 116. 
 
 These five works were published together in one volume, with the 
 title of ^/^/c^i?/zV^ (Apologetica). Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1839-40; 
 Batelli, Naples ; Speirani, Turin, 1880. In the same volume were 
 four letters, one to the Abb^ Lammenais, On the Criterion of Cer- 
 tainty (Sul Criterio della Certezza) ; one to the Abbd Gustavo del 
 Conti Avogadro, On the Abbe Vincenzo Gioberti's Theory of tlie 
 Supernatural (Sulla Teorica del Sopranaturale dell' Ab. Vincenzo 
 Gioberti) ; one to Dr. L. Prejalmini, On the P]ic7ioviena of Artificial 
 Soninainbulism (Sui Fenomeni del Sonnambulismo Artificiale) ; and a 
 second to the Abbe Lammenais. This last was originally printed in 
 the Propagatore Religioso, Milan, 1837, and then in the Praginatologia 
 at Lucca, 1838. 
 
 64. On Christian Edncation (Della Educazione Cris- 
 tiana, Libri III.). Battagia, Venice, 1823, i2mo, pp. 232; 
 reproduced in the Poliantea of Milan after Rosmini's death. 
 
 The author wrote this book in 1S22 for his sister Margaret, a nun 
 and a person of much character. Her life has been written. 
 
 65. Addresses to the Clergy on Ecclesiastical Duties 
 (Conferenze al Clero sui Doveri Ecclesiastic!). Speirani, 
 Turin, 1880, Svo, pp. 387. 
 
 66. The Rationalism threatening to insinuate itself in the 
 Schools of Theology (II Razionalismo che tcnta insinuarsi 
 nelle Scuolc Tcologichc, additato in varii rccenti opuscoli 
 anonimi), Monza, 1841. Withdrawn after a few sheets 
 were printed ; but now just published. Fratclli Bocca, 
 Turin, etc., 1882 ; Svo, pp. 310. 
 
 6'J. Exhortations to Vo?/ng Jlle/i (Esortazioni tcnute ai 
 Giovani). Fifty-one in number (first three wanting). 
 Only in manuscript.
 
 Ixviii BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 6Z. Short Discourses on the Eucharist to Children at 
 their First Communion (Discorsetti suU' Eucaristia a de' 
 Fanciulli che fanno la prima Comunione). Two in number. 
 Only in manuscript. 
 
 69. Elucidations of the Gospels (Spiegazioni Evangeliche). 
 For Sundays and chief feasts of the year. Written be- 
 tween 1821 and 1835. Only in manuscript 
 
 70. Brief Meditations (Brevi Meditazioni). On separate 
 cards for the use of persons meditating alone. Only in 
 manuscript. 
 
 71. Praises of tJie Priesthood (Lodi del Sacerdozio). An 
 unpublished juvenile work, written in 18 13. 
 
 72. Praises of St. Philip Neri (Lodi di San Filippo 
 Neri). Written in 1813. Battagia, Venice, 1821, small 
 8vo, pp. 62. 
 
 CLASS VIIL 
 
 Miscellaneous. 
 
 73. Day of Solitude (Giorno di Solitudine, di Simonino 
 Ironta). This is the earliest of Rosmini's works, having 
 been written in 1813. Its subject is the education of a poor 
 outcast boy by Friendship, Philosophy, and Religion. It 
 attempts to imitate the style of the trecentisti. 
 
 Simonino Ironta is an anagram for Antonio Rosmini. 
 
 74. Epistle to S. di Apollonia (Epistola a Sebastiano di 
 Apollonia). In blank verse. Subject, Praise of country 
 life and repose as a preparation for new duties. Bettoni, 
 Padua, 1 88 1.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. 1 
 
 XIX 
 
 75. Epistle to N. Tominasco (Epistola a Nicolo Tom- 
 maseo). On Friendship ; in blank verse. Marchesani, 
 Rovereto, 1820. 
 
 ^6. Letter to P. A. Paravia, on the Italian Language 
 (Lettera a Pier Alessandro Paravia sulla Lingua Italiana). 
 Bettoni, Padua, 1819 ; Valadini, Lugano, 1834, in the Prose ^ 
 ossia diversi Opuscoli del Cav. Ant. Rosmini-Serhati. 
 
 yj. On the Principles ivhich a Writer ought to folloiv in 
 regard to the Manner of expressing Himself (Dei Principii 
 che deve seguire uno Scrittore circa la maniera di espri- 
 mersi). Unpublished. 
 
 y^. The Idyll and the New Italian Literature (L'Idillio e 
 la Nuova Letteratura Italiana). In vol. i. of the Opnscoli 
 Filosofici, Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1827. 
 
 Treats of the three Laws of Art, Probability, Facility, and Beauty. 
 
 79. Discnssion on Beauty (Ragionamento intorno alia 
 Bellezza). See under 82. 
 
 80. Literary Amenity (Galateo dei Literati). Modena, 
 1826 ; Sartori, Ancona, 1830, i6mo, pp. 186, in vol. i. of 
 the Opuscoli Filosofici, Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1827 ; 8vo, 
 pp. 187. 
 
 This work, which gave great pleasure to Pope Pius VIII., was 
 written in reply to Gioja's Galateo, and was an attempt to show how 
 polemics ought to be conducted. 
 
 81. The Card of Excuse (La Carta di Scusa). A dialogue 
 published in the Prose, ossia diversi Opuscoli del Cav. Ant. 
 Rosmini-Serbati, Valadini, Lugano, 1834. 
 
 82. Preface to the Translation of the Life of St. Jerome 
 (Prcfazionc al Volgarizzamento dclla Vita di S. Girolamo). 
 Marchc.sani, Rovereto, 1824.
 
 Ixx BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 This translation was published under the title Volgarizzame7ito 
 dclla Vita di S. Girolaino, testo di lingua emcndato con varii MSS. 
 Rosmini was the chief co-operator in the publication. 
 
 The above four works were published in one volume under the title 
 of Literatuf'e and the Fine Arts (Letteratura e Arti Belle). Bertolotti, 
 Intra, 1870, 8vo, pp. iv., 350. A second volume, edited by Father 
 Perez, and made up of passages relating to literature and art from 
 Rosmini's various works, appeared in 1873, 8^'°) PP- S30. 
 
 83. Various Treatises on Christian Marriage. Cellini, 
 Florence, 1862, i6mo, pp. 567. This volume is made up 
 of various treatises, most of them previously published. 
 The most important is that On the Civil Lazvs relating to 
 the Marriage of Christians (Sulle Leggi Civili die riguar- 
 dano il Matrimonio de' Cristiani), consisting of a number 
 of articles addressed to Bishop Moreno of Ivrea, and 
 printed in the Armenia of Turin. Reproduced in book form 
 at Turin, 185 1. 
 
 84. On the Siccardi Law (Sulla Legge Siccardi). A 
 series of articles in the Armenia of Turin, 1850. 
 
 85. Charity (La Carita, discorso). Casuccio, Casale, 
 1852. 
 
 86. Rules of the Institute of Charity (Regole dell' Isti- 
 tuto delle Carita). Latin and Italian, Marietti, Turin, 1837. 
 
 87. Constitutions of the Institnte of Charity (Costi- 
 tuzioni deir Istituto della Carita). In Latin. Printed in 
 England, but not published or accessible. Quarto. 
 
 88. Rules of the Adscripts to the Institnte of Charity 
 (Regole degli Ascritti all' Istituto della Carita). Printed, 
 along with No. 57, Ibertis, Novara, 1842. 
 
 89. Statute for the Missionaries of the Institute of 
 Charity at the Sacra of St. Micliacl (Statute pei Mis- 
 sionarii dell' Istituto della Carita). Marietti, Turin, 1847.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixxi 
 
 90. Notices of the Institute of Charity (Notizic dell' 
 Istituto dclla Carita). Cibrario, in the Calendario dcgli 
 Ordini Rcligiosi, 1 847. 
 
 91. Coinmoii Rules of the Sisters of Providence (Regole 
 comuni dclle Sucre della Provvidenza). Bianchi, Lugano, 
 1842. 
 
 92. Rules of the Pension Mellerio at Doniodossola, 
 managed by the Brothers of Charity (Regole de' Convittori 
 del Collegio Mellerio di Domodossola, retto dai Fratelli 
 della Carita). Marietti, Turin, 1S38. 
 
 93. On the Existence of Religious Conininnities (SuIT 
 Esistenza delle Comunita religiose). Incomplete manu- 
 script. 
 
 94. History of Humanity (Storia dell' Umanita). Of 
 this only a small portion, containing some original views 
 on the origin of the primitive language, was ever written. 
 Manuscript. 
 
 95. Synoptical Table of the Natural and Supernatural 
 Pozvers (Tavola Sinottica delle Potcnze Naturali e Sopra- 
 naturali). Part of this was used \\} the compilation of the 
 table printed in Vincenrjo Giobcrti e il Panteismo (No. 19), 
 Lucca, 1853. 
 
 96. Sketch of Modern Philosophy (Schizzo sulla Filosofia 
 Moderna). Spcirani, Turin, 1880, 8vo, pp. 23. Reprinted 
 from La Sapicnza. 
 
 97. On the Spirit of the Institute of Charity {Sullo 
 Spirito deir Istituto dclla Carita). Four discourses, meant 
 U) be followed by a fifth on Sacrifice (Sacrifizio), whicl) 
 exists onl}- in manuscript. Bertolotti, Intra, 1871, i8mo, 
 pp. 282.
 
 Ixxii BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 98. Correspondence (Epistolario). Of this, two volumes 
 have been published with the title Epistole Religioso-fami- 
 liari. Paravia, Turin, 1857, 8vo. 
 
 There still remains unpuljlished an immense mass of corre- 
 spondence, amounting, it is said, in all to about fifteen thousand letters. 
 Many of these refer to Rosmini's Institute and Philosophical System. 
 
 99. The Mission of Antonio Rosniini-Serhati to the Court 
 of Rome hi the years 1848-49 {Missione di Antonio Ros- 
 mini-Serbati alia . Corte di Roma negli Anni 1848-49). 
 Paravia, Rome, etc., 1881, 8vo, pp. 418. 
 
 B. WORKS RELATING TO ROSMINI'S LIFE 
 AND PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 ACRI, Prof. Francesco. Abbozzo di una Teoria delle Idee. 
 
 Palermo, 1870. 
 Allievo, G. Hegelianismo, la Scienza e le Vita. Turin, 
 
 1868. 
 Angeleri, Prof. Francesco. Delia Liberta del Pensiero. 
 
 Discorso. A. Merlo, Verona, 1864, 8vo, pp. 24. 
 Antonio Rosmini. Discorso. Inst. Turazza, 
 
 Treviso, 1871, 8vo, pp. 55. 
 Elementi di Morale. Inst. Turazza, Treviso, 1874, 
 
 pp. 1 18. 
 Trattato di Filosofia Elementare, proposto agli 
 
 Alunni de' Licei. Druckcr and Tedeschi, Verona and 
 Padua (3rd edit), 1877, i2mo, pp. 532. 
 Suir Odierno Conflitto tra i Rosminiani ed i 
 
 Tomisti. Spagliardi, Parabi:^go, 1879, l2mo, pp. 48. 
 Un Articolo-della Voce della Verita sul Dialog© 
 
 intitolato " II Verbo Essere." Spagliardi, Parabiago, 
 1879, i2mo, pp. 32,
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixxiii 
 
 Annales de Philosophie Ciir^tienne, Paris, 8vo. 
 Series IV., Vol. X. (1854), pp. 254 sqq. ; Series V., 
 Vol. I. (i860), pp. 206 sqq.; New Series, Vol. IV. 
 (1881), pp. 797-800 (Review by De Bonniot of Paoli's 
 Life of Rosmini). At p. 485 of Series IV., Vol. X. 
 (1859), there is a list of articles on Rosmini which I 
 have been unable to see. 
 
 Barola, Prof. Paolo, Rassegna dell' Opera, "La Som- 
 
 maria Cagione." 
 Barone, Prof. Francesco, Orazione funebre di Antonio 
 
 Rosmini. 
 Bartholm^SS, Ch. J. B. Histoire Critique des doctrines 
 
 religieuses de la Philosophie Moderne. Paris, 1855, 
 
 8vo. 
 Bernardi, Monsignor Jacopo. Giovane Eta e primi 
 
 Studii di Antonio Rosmini. Lettere a Pier Alessandro 
 
 Paravia, Chiantore, Pinerolo, i860, i2mo, pp. 278. 
 Bertacchi, a. Sopra un Frammento d' Articolo della 
 
 Ck'ilta Cattolica. Benedini-Guidotti, Lucca, 1855, 
 
 8vo, pp. 1 1. 
 Bertazzi, Prof. Girolamo. Sistema Ideologic© di Antonio 
 
 Rosmini. Frigerio, Verona, 1858. 
 BertolOZZI, Monsignor Gian Paolo. Lettera sul Finto 
 
 Eusebio. 
 Bevilacqua, Sac. Vigilio. Spechietto dclla celebre 
 
 quistione tra Neo-Tomisti e Rosminiani, Paroni, 
 
 Vicenza, 1881, i2mo, pp. 173. 
 BoiSTEL, Alphonse. Cours Elementairc de droit naturcl 
 
 ou de philosophie de droit, suivant Ics principes de 
 
 Rosmini. Thorin, Paris, 1870, 8vo, pp. 458. 
 BOXGIII, Ruggiero. Le Stresiane. 
 Delia Relazione dclla Filosofia colla Socicta. 
 
 Prolusione. Vallardi, Milan, 1859.
 
 Ixxiv BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 BOTTA, Vincenzo, Ph.D., in Appendix II. (Historical 
 Sketch of Modem Philosophy in Italy) to the 
 American translation of Dr. F. Ueberweg's Griindriss 
 der GescJiichte dcT Philosophic (History of Philosophy 
 from Thales to the Present Time. Translated by 
 Geo. S. Morris, A.M. Scribner, Armstrong, and Co., 
 New York, 1874, 2 vols. 8vo). Vol. II. pp. 489-496. 
 Broglialdi, Prof Adolfo. Elogio di Antonio Rosmini. 
 Brownson, Orestes A. Quarterly Review. Sadlier, New 
 York, 8vo. In the volume for the year 1864, Rosmini 
 is noticed at pp. 304, 309, 310, 311 ; in the volume for 
 1874 on pp. 27, 154, 496, 502, 503, 
 BURONI, Sac. Giuseppe. Dell' Essere e del Conoscere. 
 Stamperia Reale, Turin, 1877, 8vo, pp. 50 {rl'Siiine of 
 • the following work). 
 
 Deir Essere e del Conoscere. Studii su Par- 
 
 menide, Platone e Rosmini. Stamperia Reale, Paravia, 
 Turin, 1878, 4to, pp. iv., 439. 
 Risposta al Padre Cornoldi di C. di G. in difesa 
 
 delle Nozioni di Ontologia secondo Rosmini e S. Tom- 
 maso. Paravia, Turin, 8vo, pp. 200. 
 Rosmini e S. Tommaso. Nozioni di Ontologia, 
 
 per Introduzione alio Studio dclla Teologia. Confronti 
 tra la Teosofia del Rosmini e delle Somme di S. 
 Tommaso. 2nda. Edizione, accresciuta di una lettera 
 sulla Teorica del Progresso infinito. Paravia, Turin, 
 1878, 8vo, pp. viii., 173. 
 La Trinita e le Creazione. Nuovi Confronti tra il 
 
 Rosmini e S. Tommaso, dedicati alia Civilta Cattolica, 
 
 con un appendice sulla Necessita di liberare la Chiesa 
 
 dalla Calunnia. Paravia, Turin, 1879, 8vo, pp. ii., 180. 
 
 ■ Antonio Rosmini c la Cixilta Cattolica dinanzi 
 
 alia Sacra Congregazione dell' Indice, ossia Spiega
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixxv 
 
 zione del Dimniittautur Opera A. Rosmiiii-Scrbati, 
 secondo la Sollccita di Benedetto XIV. Edizione 
 Seconda, cresciuta di molte aggiunte c di una parte 
 seconda di cio che e seguito di poi pubblicata la prima. 
 Paravia, Turin, 1880, 8vo, pp. viii., 218 (First Edition, 
 Speirani e Figli, Turin, 1876, i6mo, pp. 210). 
 BURONI, Sac. Giuseppe. La Ragione e la Fede secondo 
 I'Enciclica Aiterni Patris. Tipografia S. Giuseppe, 
 Turin, 8vo, pp. 40. 
 
 Cesare Cantu e Giuseppe Buroni. Delia Nuova 
 
 Dichiarazione quasi ultima della S. Congregazione 
 deir Indice sulla formola Diinittantiir e del libro 
 novissimo di G. M. Cornoldi di C. d. G., // Rosminla- 
 nisino sintcsi di Ontologia e Panteismo. L'ultimo Capo 
 inedito del detto libro del Cornoldi, rimaso nella 
 Civiltd Cattolica. Unione Tipog-Editrice, Turin, 1882, 
 8vo, pp. 32. 
 
 Calza, Sac. Giuseppe. Saggio di Filosofia delle Mate- 
 matiche. Collegio Artigianelli, Turin, 1869, i2mo, 
 pp. 275. 
 
 Scienza dell' Aritmetica. Porta, Domodossola, 
 
 1872, 8vo, pp. 510. 
 
 Discorso letto il 26 Aprile, 1878, nell' occasione 
 
 della Distribuzione dei premi agli Alunni del Ginnasio 
 Mellerio pareggiato ai regi. Porta, Domodossola, 
 1878, 4to, pp. 20. 
 c Perez, Sac. Paolo. Esposizione della Filosofia 
 
 di Antonio Rosmini con uno Sguardo al luogo ch' ella 
 tiene fra I'antica Scienza c la nuova. Bertolotti, 
 Intra, 1878, 3 vols, large 8vo, pp. vii., 467, 543 (third 
 vol. not published). 
 Elemcnti di I'otanica con Appcndice suU' Origine
 
 IXXVI BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 degli Enti Organizzati. Parte I. Botanica Gcnerale. 
 
 Porta, Domodossola, 1881, pp. 210. 
 Capaxori, p. Bernardo. Lettera al Sig. Abate Ales- 
 
 sandro Pestalozza, estratto dalla Cronaca, Nos. 15-17. 
 
 Guglielmini, 1857, ^^o, pp. 12. An answer to some 
 
 strictures made by the Civilta Cattolica. 
 Caroli, Gian Maria. Del Magnetismo Animale, ossia 
 
 Mesmerism© in ordine alia Ragione e alia Rivelazione. 
 
 Bologna, 1858, 2 vols. 8vo. 
 Corso di Pedagogia. 
 
 Casara, Sebastiano. Sul Carattere Battesimale. Studio. 
 Istituto Turazza, Treviso, 1876, 8vo, pp. 64. 
 
 ■ La Verita per la Carita. Memoria del Prof. A, 
 
 Fontana esaminata. Tip. Arcivesc., Milan, 1878, 8vo 
 PP- 13- 
 
 I Rosminiani e I'Ontologismo del P. Cornold: 
 
 della C. d. G., con Risposta all' Opuscolo : " Una 
 Questione Lombarda e una Ouestione Piemontese,' 
 del Prevosto Ruffoni. Tip. Arcivesc, Milan, 1878, 8vo 
 pp. 26. 
 
 La Luce dell' Occhio corporeo e quella dell 
 
 Intelletto. Parallelo illustrate con Dottrine del S 
 Dottore Aquinate, a cui son dimostrate conformi 
 quelle dell' illustre abbate Antonio Rosmini. Terza 
 Edizione, riveduta e accresciuta di qualche Nota e di 
 Appendice con Dottrine del Santo Dottore di Bagnorea 
 Spagliardi, Parabiago, 1879, i2mo, pp. 100. 
 
 II Sistema Filosofico Rosminiano, dimostrato 
 
 vcro ncl suo Principio fondamentale con lo Studio e 
 Sviluppo di un solo Articolo della Somma Teologica 
 di S. Tomaso d' Aquino. Tip. Vescov., Casale, 1879, 
 1 2 mo, pp. 88. 
 
 Cavour, March. Gustavo. Fragmens Philosophiques.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY, Ixxvii 
 
 Fontana, Turin, 1841, 8vo, pp. 398. Rosmini is 
 
 treated on pp. 139-213. 
 Cavour, March. Gustavo. Delia Proprieta Ecclesiastica. 
 
 Sur la Religion e la Morale. 
 
 CORNOLDI, Sac. Giov. Maria, S. J. II Rosminianismo 
 
 sintesi dell' Ontologismo e del Panteismo. Bcfani, 
 
 Rome, 1 88 1, large 8vo, pp. 450. 
 CORTE, Pietro Antonio. Logica Generalis et Metaphysiccs 
 
 Elementa. Favale, Turin, 1846, 8vo, pp. 226. 
 
 Elementa Philosophise in usum Seminariorum. 
 
 Marietti, Turin, 1874, 3 vols. i2mo, pp. 291, 166, 243. 
 
 Prodezze dell' Osservatore Cattolico di Milano 
 
 (Estratto della Gazetta Piemontese, Nos. 254, 258, 259). 
 Favale, Turin, 1875, i6mo, pp. 24. 
 Gentilezze della Civilta Cattolica di Firenze 
 
 (Estratto della Gazetta Piemoittese, Nos. 301, 306). 
 Favale, Turin, 1875, i6mo, pp. 42. 
 I Rosminiani secondo 1' Osservatore Cattolico 
 
 (Estratto della Gazetta Piemoiitesc, No. loi). Favale, 
 Torino, 1876, pp. 1 1. 
 Ermeneutica della Civilta Cattolica (Estratto 
 
 della Gazetta Piemontese, Nos. 31, 32, 33, 39, 40). 
 Favale, Turin, 1876, i6mo, pp. 45, 7. 
 I Punti Fondamentali del Sistema Filosofico del 
 
 Rosmini, discussi e dichiarati per servire all' Intel- 
 ligenza del Nuovo Saggio siilV Origine delle Idee. 
 Favale, Turin, 1876, i2mo, pp. iv. 350. 
 
 Davidson, Thomas. Domodossola e 1' Istituto Rosmi- 
 niano. Traduzione dall' Inglese del Prof. Giu- 
 seppe Bormida. Bertolotti, Intra, 1880, 8vo, pp. 35. 
 (Translation of letters written to The Boston Daily 
 Advertiser, in June, 1880.)
 
 Ixxviii . BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Davidson, Thomas. Antonio Rosmini. Fortnightly 
 T^^z/^Veiy, November, 1 88 1. Cf. The Philosophical Move- 
 ment in the Roman Chnvch, in the same periodical, 
 May, 1882. 
 
 De Bonniot. See Annales de Philosophie CJirctienne. 
 
 De-Nardi, Pietro. Leggi Supreme dell' umana Educa- 
 zione. Discorso letto il giorno 20 giugno, 1880, nella 
 Sala del Gran Consilio in Locarno. Bertolotti, Intra, 
 1880, large 8vo, pp. 24. 
 
 La Filosofia di Antonio Rosmini-Serbati difesa 
 
 contro i Neo-scolastici del Canton Ticino. Parte 
 prima. Risposte alle Obbiezioni piu comuni. Bellin- 
 zona, Tipog. Cantonale, 1881, i2mo, pp. xv., 271. 
 
 De Vit, Dre. Vincenzo. Cenni Biografici di Antonio Ros- 
 mini. Onori funebri e Testimonianze rese alia sua 
 Memoria, raccolti dai Sacerdoti dell' Istituto della 
 Carita di Stresa. Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1855 ; 
 Bertolotti, Intra, 1871 ; 8vo, pp. 127. (This work 
 contains a list of Rosmini's writings. It has run 
 through several editions, and has appeared in English, 
 under the title An Ontline of the Life of Antonio 
 Rosmini-Serbati. Edited by the Rev. William Lock- 
 hart. London, 1856). 
 
 Fabri, Giovanni. Sopra 1' Ultima Questione Rosminiana. 
 Poche Parole. Giannini, Naples, 1876, i6mo, pp. 58. 
 
 Facrizio, Padre (Riformato). Del Lume dell' Intelletto 
 secondo la Dottrina de' SS. Dottori Agostino, Bona- 
 ventura e Tommaso d'Aquino, opposta al Sistema del 
 Soggettivismo propugnato dal Card. Parocchi nell' 
 Indirizzo a PP. Leone XIII. circa I'Enciclica ^tcrni 
 Patris. Loescher, Rome, Turin, Plorcnce, 1881, 8vo, 
 pp. xxxii., 784. (This work appeared anonj-mously.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixxix 
 
 but the author is said to be a monk of Modcna, bear- 
 ing the above name.) 
 
 Fasolis, Sac. Ugolino. Nuovo Testo di Filosofia elemcn- 
 tare disposto a forma di dialogo ad uso dei Licei c 
 Seminari. Turin, 1858, 2 vols. Vol. I., Protologia, 
 Logica e Metafisica; Vol. II., Etica, Pedagogia Morale, 
 Diritto, Eudemonologia. 8vo. 
 
 ■ Elementi della Filosofia e Storia del Diritto, 
 
 tratti dai principii della modcrna Filosofia Italiana e 
 disposti secondo il programma delle scuole universi- 
 tarie di giurisprudenza. Turin, 1867, 8vo. 
 
 Ferrari, Giuseppe. Essai sur le Principe et les Limitcs 
 de la Philosophic de I'Histoire. Joubcrt, Paris, 1843, 
 8vo, pp. xvi., 547. The portion relating to the doc- 
 trines of Rosmini is on pp. 184-202. 
 
 Ferrari's criticism plainly shows that he did not understand Ros- 
 mini. 
 
 La Philosophic Catholique en Italic, in Revi/e 
 
 des DeiLX Mondes, New Series, vol. v. (March, 1844), 
 pp. 956-994 ; vol. vi. (May, 1854), pp. 6a,Z-^ZZ. 
 
 FerrIc, Monsig. Pietro Maria, Vescovo di Casale. Espo- 
 sizione del Principio filosofico di Antonio Rosmini e 
 sua Armonia colla Dottrina Cristiana. Con un Ap- 
 pendice suU' Ordinamento dello Studio Teologico. 
 Frigerio, Verona, 1859, ^^'o, pp. 141. 
 
 St. Thomas of Aquin and Ideology. A discourse 
 
 read to the Accademia Romana, i8th August, 1870. 
 Burns and Oates, London, 1875, i2mo, pp. vi., 42. 
 (The same has twice appeared in French with the title 
 S. Thomas d'Aquin et I'ldcologie, Paris, 1S76, 8vo, 
 pp. 24; 1881, i2mo, pp. 48. 
 
 Degli Universali, secondo la Tcoria Rosminiana,
 
 Ixxx BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 confrontata colla Dottrina di S. Tommaso d'Aquino e 
 con quclla di parecchi Tomisti e Filosofi Moderni. 
 Con Appendice di nove Opuscoli di Argomento 
 affine. Bertero, Casale, 1880 — ? 10 vols. 8vo. 
 (The Introduction to this work is pubHshed sepa- 
 rately. Spagliardi, Parabiago, 1880, 8vo, pp. 38.) 
 
 Ferri, Prof. Louis. Essai sur I'Histoire de la Philo- 
 sophic en Italic au xix'^'"^- Siecle. Durand, and Didier 
 & Cs'"^-, Paris, 1869, 2 vols, 8vo. (The part devoted 
 to Rosmini is in vol. i. pp. 69-336.) 
 
 Frati, Can. Severino. A. Rosmini, ossia Cenni suU' 
 Immortalita dell' Anima. Fiaccadori, Parma, 1861. 
 
 Indici degli Autori delle Matcrie e dei luoghi 
 
 della S. Scrittura, contenuti nei tre primi volumi della 
 Teosofia di Antonio Rosmini. Paravia, Turin, 1881, 
 8vo, pp. 137. 
 
 There are some remarks on Rosmini's philosophy in the preface to 
 the same author's translation of St. Bonaventura's Itinerariiim Mentis 
 in Deitni. 
 
 Garelli, V. Sulla Filosofia Morale. 
 
 Biografia di Antonio Rosmini-Scrbati. Turin, 
 
 1861, i8mo. 
 
 Gastaldi, Monsig. Lorenzo. Lettcra 1. e II. all' abate 
 C. B. P. contro Eusebio Cristiano, in U Ediicazione 
 del Clcro. 
 
 Lettera pastorale dell' Arcivescovo di Torino al 
 
 suo Clcro suir Enciclica Aiterni Patris di SS. Leone 
 XIII. Turin, 1881, 8vo, pp. 18. 
 
 Gatti, Can. Giuseppe. Elogio di Antonio Rosmini. 
 
 Gilardi, Sac. Carlo. Sulla Controvcrsia fra Monsig. 
 Scavini c 1' abbate Rosmini intorno all' applicazione 
 del principio riflcsso La Lcgge Dnbbia noii obbliga.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixxxi 
 
 Opuscolo che fa seguito alle lettere di Antonio 
 Rosmini sulla medesima Questione. Pirotta, Milan. 
 185 1, 8vo, pp. 22. 
 GlOBERTI, Sac. Vincenzo, Degli Errori filosofici di An- 
 tonio Rosmini. Meline, Cans & Co., Brussels, 1843, 
 3 vols. 8vo, pp. Ixxii., 380, 420, 402; Capolago, 1846, 
 3 vols. i2mo. 
 
 HUGONIN, Abbe. Two articles in Le Correspondant, July 
 and September, 1859. (Contain a number of inaccu- 
 racies.) 
 
 Lanzoxi, Sac. Luigi. Parole che il Preposito Generale 
 deir Istituto della Carita nella Chiesa sul Calvario 
 diceva a' Novizi. Bertolotti, Intra, 1878, 8vo, pp. 12. 
 
 Compendium Theologiae Dogmaticse. Tomus I, 
 
 Theologia Generalis seu Logica Theologica. De Deo 
 Uno et Trino. De Deo Creatore. Unione Tip.-Edit., 
 Turin, 1882, 8vo, pp. 558. 
 
 LiLLA, Vincenzo. Kant e Rosmini. Borgarelli, Turin, 
 1869, 8vo, pp. 90. 
 
 LiPPARONi, Monsig. Gregorio. A Philosophia conforme a 
 mente de S. Thomas de Aquinas, exposta per A. 
 Rosmini, em Harmonia com a Scienza e com a Religiao. 
 Pt. I. Dias, Rio de Janeiro, 1880, 8vo, pp. 123. 
 
 Mamiani della Rovere, Contc Terenzio. Del Rinno- 
 vamcnto della Filosofia antica Italiana. Lib. I. 
 Silvestri, Milano, 1837, i2mo, pp. 456. 
 
 Sei Lettere al Sig. Abate Antonio Rosmini-Scr- 
 
 bati. 
 
 There are many references to Rosmini's works in others of 
 ]\Iamiani's writings, e.g. in his Coifcssioni di nn Me/ajisico, and in his 
 Coinpetidio e Sintesi della Propria Filosofia ossia Nuovi Prolcgoineni 
 ad ogni presente e futura Metafisica. 
 
 f
 
 Ixxxil BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Mamini, C. Diagnosi comparativa della Filosofia di 
 Rosmini e di Mamiani. Bologna, i860, 161110. 
 
 Iiitorno al Libro del Prof. Carlo Passaglia, intito- 
 
 lato ; La Dottrma di S. Toinniaso secondo VEiiciclica 
 di Leone X III. Osservazioni. Turin, 1881, i2mo. 
 
 Manzoni, Alessandro. II Dialogo sull' Invenzione di 
 Alessandro Manzoni e la Filosofia Rosminiana. 
 Boniardi-Pogliani, Milan, 1879, 8vo, pp. 85. 
 
 There is a French translation of this by De Fresne. Vaton, Paris, 185S, 
 l2mo. 
 
 Mariano, Raffaele. La Philosopliie Contemporaine en 
 Italic. Essai de Philosopliie Hegelienne. Germer 
 Bailliere, Paris, 1868, i2mo. Rosmini is treated on 
 
 pp. 46-79- 
 MarSILLI, Can. Luigi. Sinopsi delle Lezioni di Ideologia. 
 Martini, Prof. Lorenzo. Storia dclla Filosofia. Pirotta, 
 
 Milan, 1838, 8vo, 2 vols., pp. 365, 372. The part 
 
 dealing with Rosmini is in vol. ii., pp. 307-372. 
 Mezzera, Sac. Giuseppe. La Cantabromachia o VOsser- 
 
 vatore Cattolico in Camicia. Reformatorio Patronato, 
 
 Milan, 1881, i2mo, pp. 132. 
 Osservazioni sul recente Opuscolo del eminentis- 
 
 simo Cardinal Tommaso Zigliara intorno alia Spie- 
 
 gazione del DimittaUir. Reform. Patronato, Milan, 
 
 1881, 32mo, pp. 16. 
 MiNGHETTi, M. Deir Economia Pubblica e delle sue 
 
 Attinenze colla Morale e col Diritto. Libri Cinque. 
 
 Le Monnier, Florence, 1859, 8vo, pp. 595. 
 MiSSIAGLlA, Antonio. Osservazioni intorno alle Censure 
 
 fatte al Frasario Rosminiano. Apollonio, Verona, 
 
 1877, 8vo, pp. 44. 
 MOGLIA, Prev. Agostino. I Suareziani e TAbate Rosmini. 
 
 Discorso Primo. Solari, Piacenza, 1882, 8vo, pp. 1 10.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixxxiii 
 
 Monti, B. Del Fondamento, Progresso e Sistema delle 
 Conoscenze Umane. 
 
 Hotter, Giacomo. II " Dimittatur " della Sacra Con- 
 gregazione dell' Indice e Antonio Rosmini, in Risposta 
 ad alcuni Articoli del Molto reverendo Prof. Don 
 Giuseppe Lange. Seiser, Trent, 1880, 8vo, pp. 32. 
 
 Nova, A. Delle Censure dell' Abate Antonio Rosmini- 
 Serbati contro la dottrina religiosa di G. D. Roma- 
 gnosi. 1842, 8vo. 
 
 OSSERVATORE DI Trento (Nos. 5 and 7). Vero Aspetto 
 della Quistione Rosminiana. Klipper-Fronza, Trent, 
 1880, i2mo, pp. 20. 
 
 PagANI, Sac. Gio. Battista. Doctrina Peccati Originalis de- 
 structiva in Ficto Eusebio Christiano contenta. Milan, 
 Boniardi-Pogliani, i2mo, pp. 61. 
 
 Paganini, p. II Padre Bernardo e la Civilta Cattolica 
 Osservazioni. Guidotti, Lucca, 1854, 8vo, pp. 119. 
 
 Sommarii di tre Ragionamenti del Prof. Paga- 
 nini, letti alia R. Accademia Lucchese. Bcrtini 
 Lucca, 1855, 8vo, pp. 12. 
 
 Pensieri sul Progresso della Filosofia (Estratto 
 
 dair Araldo, No. 17). Laudi, Lucca, 1S57, i2mo, 
 pp. 7. 
 S. Tommaso d' Aquino e il Rosmini. Saggio 
 
 d' Osservazioni sulle loro Dottrine ideologiche. 
 Vanucchi, Pisa, 1857, 8vo, pp. 48. 
 Lettera al P. G. P. P. (Estratto dall' Araldo, 
 
 No. 35). Laudi, Lucca, 1858, i2mo, pp. 8. 
 Storia d' uno Studente di Filosofia, narrata da 
 
 Giuseppe Piola ed esaminata da P. Paganini. Guidotti, 
 Lucca, 1858, 1 2 mo, pp. 140.
 
 1 xxxl V BIBLIO GRA PH Y. 
 
 Paganini, p. De prima Superstitionis Origine. Dissertatio 
 habita in Aula magna Athenaei Pisani, anno 1857. 
 Nistri, Pisa, 1858, 4to, pp. 23. 
 
 Sulle pill riposte Armonie della Filosofia 
 
 Naturale colla Filosofia Sopranaturale. Nistri, Pisa, 
 1 86 1, 8vo, pp. 140. 
 
 Dello Spazio. Saggio Cosmologico. Nistri, 
 
 Pisa, 1862, 8vo, pp. 58. 
 Alcune Osservazioni sulla Fortuna di Dante 
 
 (Estratto dall' Araldo Cattolicd). Laudi, Lucca, 1862, 
 8vo, pp. 16. 
 
 Delia Natura delle Idee secondo Platone. 
 
 — — Forza e Materia. Lezione premessa al Corso di 
 
 Ideologia e Logica, nell' anno accademico, 1868-69. 
 
 Nistri, Pisa, 1869, 8vo, pp. 23. 
 Palatini, Sac. Leopold©. Del Principio Filosofico di 
 
 Antonio Rosmini. Verona, 1869. 
 Paoli, a. Lo Schopenhauer e il Rosmini. Vol. L La 
 
 Rappresentazione e 1' Idea. Bencini, Rome, 1878, 
 
 i2mo, pp. 375. 
 Sac. Francesco. Antonio Rosmini e la sua 
 
 Prosapia. Monografia. Grigoletti, Rovereto, 1880, 
 
 Svo, pp. 157. 
 ■ Della Vita di Antonio Rosmini-Serbati. Memo- 
 
 rie pubblicate dall' Accademia di Rovereto. Paravia, 
 
 Rome, Turin, etc., 1880, 8vo, pp. 624. 
 Passaglia, Prof. Carlo. Della Dottrina di S. Tommaso 
 
 secondo 1' Enciclica di Leone XIII. Studii. Paravia, 
 
 Rome, etc., 1880, i2mo, pp. 367. 
 Pedrotti, Sac. Mariantonio. II Lume della Ragione. 
 
 Trent, 1842. 
 PestALOZZA, Alessandro. Le Postille di un Anonimo. 
 
 Saggio di Osservazione. Redaelli, Milan, 1850, 8vo, 
 
 pp. 194.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixxxv 
 
 Pestalozza, Alessandro. Le Dottrine di Antonio Rosmini 
 difese dalle Imputazioni del noto Prete Bolognese. 
 2 vols. Vol. I., RedaelH, Milan, 185 1 ; Vol. II., 
 Regorda e Cabrini, Lodi, 1853 ; pp. 590 and 345. 
 
 La Mente di Antonio Rosmini. Con ritratto del 
 
 Rosmini. Redaelli, Milan, 1855, 8vo, pp. 122. 
 
 Compendium Philosophise. Redaelli, Milan, 
 
 1857, 2 vols. i2mo, pp. 257, 344. 
 
 Petri, Ab. Giuseppe. A. Rosmini e i Neo-Scolastici : Le 
 Dottrine di Antonio Rosmini sulla Conoscenza difese, 
 e quelle che oppongono il P. M. Liberatore di C. di G. 
 ed altri esaminate. Paravia, Rome, etc., 1878, 8vo, 
 pp. 605. 
 
 ■ Risposta ad alcune Appunti della Ch'iltct 
 
 Cattolica sul libro, A Rosfiiini e gli Scolastici, con 
 Appendice all' Osservatore Cattolico di Milano. Pa- 
 ravia, Rome, etc., 1879, 8vo, pp. loi. 
 
 Su alcuni Punti dell' Enciclica yEtcrni Patris 
 
 travolti dall' Osservatore Cattolico di Milano. Lucca, 
 1879. 
 " Suir Odierno Conflitto tra i Rosminiani e i 
 
 Tomisti," Studio storico, critico, morale del Sac. 
 Antonio Valdameri esaminato. Paravia, Rome, etc., 
 1879, 8vo, pp. 247. 
 
 Le Addizioni alia Stampa dell' Operetta suU' 
 
 Odierno Conflitto, etc. Paravia, Rome, etc., 1880, 
 8vo, pp. 131. 
 I Rosminiani calunniati dal Prevosto Achille 
 
 Rufoni e perseguitati in Crema con abuso manifesto 
 
 dcir autorita pontificia. Serchio, Lucca, 1880, 8vo, 
 pp. 61. 
 
 Pevretti, G. B. Saggio di Logica Gcncralc, ossia lilc-
 
 Ixxxvi BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 menti di Filosofia ad uso delle Scuole Sccondarie. 
 Turin, 1857, 8vo. 
 
 There are other works by Peyretti based on Rosmini's system. 
 
 POLONINI, Carlo. Accordo delle Dottrine dell' abate 
 Rosmini con quelle di S. Tommaso dimostrato e 
 difeso contro le Accuse del Sac. Antonio Valdameri, 
 Autore dell' Odicrjio Conjlitto. Spagliardi, Parabiago, 
 1879, i2mo, pp. 292. 
 
 PUECHER, Francesco. Delia Conformita del Rosmini con 
 S. Tommaso nella Dottrina Ideologica (Estratto della 
 Cronaca, No. 19). 1857, 8vo, pp. 8. 
 
 • Osservazioni sulle Letter e Critiche del Theiner. 
 
 Casuccio, Casale, 185 1. 
 
 Raggio, Prof. Luigi. Le odierne Condizioni della Filo- 
 sofia in Italia. Florence, 1867. 
 
 Rayneri, G. a. Primi Principii di Metodica. Turin, 
 1854. 
 
 Rossi, Vincenzo. Un Articolo di Scienza (Estratto dall' 
 hnparziale di Faenza, an. V., Nos. 47 and 50). 
 Faenza, 1845, i6mo, pp. 14. 
 
 SciOLLA, Prof. Giuseppe. Elementa Philosophiae Moralis. 
 
 Unione Tip.-Edit, Turin, 1838, 8vo, pp. 230. 
 Sandona, Sac. Giuseppe. Della Filosofia Morale, con- 
 
 siderata in se e ne' suoi rapporti alle Condizioni 
 
 d' Italia. Florence, 1847, 2 vols. i2mo. 
 Trattato di Diritto Internazionale moderno. 
 
 Florence, 1870. 8vo. Forms the seventh volume of 
 
 the Bibliotcea delle Seienze Legali. 
 Sani, Prof. Achille. Prolusione Philosophica.
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY. Ixxxvii 
 
 Saturday Review, November 19, 1881. . Article on 
 
 Rosmini. 
 Seydel, R. Review of the Rinnovainento della Filosofia in 
 
 Italia, in the Zeitschrift fiir Philosophic mid pJiilos. 
 
 Kritik, vol. xxxiii. (1858-59), pp. 263-274. 
 
 Taglioretti, Sac. Angelo. II Verbo Essere. Frammenti 
 di un Dialogo. Milan, 1878 (2nd edit), 8vo, pp. 29. 
 
 Tarditi, Prof. Lettere di un Rosminiano a Vincenzo 
 Gioberti. Fa vale, Turin, 1841-42, i2mo, pp. 200. 
 
 These letters, though gathered by Tarditi, were really written by 
 Rosmini himself. 
 
 TODESCHI, Bar. Giuglio. Dialoghi Filosofico - morali. 
 
 Lugano, 1849, i6mo; Casuccio, Casale, 1849, i6mo, 
 
 pp. 197. 
 TOMMASiiO, N. Antonio Rosmini. 1855. 
 Esposizione del Sistema Filosofico del Niiovo 
 
 Saggio sidC Origine dclle Idee di A. Rosmini-Scrbati. 
 
 Padova, 1838, 8vo, pp. 126. 
 Studi Filosofici. Gondoliere, Venice, 1840, 
 
 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 282, 283. 
 Studi Critici. Gondoliere, Venice, 1843, 2 parts. 
 
 8vo. 
 Studi Morali. Sanvito, Milan, 1858, i2mo, 
 
 pp. 480. 
 
 V , D. A. M. Lettcra intorno al Saggio dclla 
 
 Teorica sopra gli Universali secondo i Principi di S. 
 Tommaso d Aquino. Marcggiani, Bologna, 18O3, 
 i2mo, pp. 39.
 
 Ixxxviii BIBLIOGRAPHY. 
 
 Weisse, Prof. Review of the Nnovo Saggio, in Zeitschrift 
 fuf Philosophic unci philosophischc Kritik, vol. xxviii., 
 Heft 2. 
 
 Note. — Besides these works there are published two periodicals, 
 whose purpose it is to uphold the philosophy of Rosmini — La 
 Sapiensa, a monthly magazine, Speirani, Turin, 1880 sqq. ; and 
 L'Afeneo, a weekly illustrated paper, also published at Turin. The 
 former contains many valuable articles, among which those by 
 Professor Stoppani, the eminent geologist, take a high place. The 
 latter is one of the best of the Italian weeklies.
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Perhaps the strongest objection that can be urged against 
 revolutions and the selfish conservatism that makes them 
 necessary is that, in overthrowing vicious and burdensome 
 systems, they likewise destroy, or cast into oblivion, much 
 of the good which originally rendered these systems pos- 
 sible and, in their day, useful. This was particularly true 
 of that revolution which took form in the philosophy of 
 the seventeenth century, and which overthrew the Scholas- 
 ticism of the Middle Ages. No doubt, the later Scholasticism, 
 that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, deserved 
 most of the contempt which fell to its lot ; but it was a 
 mistake to confound in a common rejection this degraded, 
 empty, flatulent system with the vigorous thought of the 
 thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This mistake was 
 committed by modern thought, when it revolted entire!}' 
 from Scholasticism. This result, indeed, was almost un- 
 avoidable ; for a thorough-going temporary breach with 
 Scholasticism was necessary, in order to deprive it of that 
 tyrannical and morbid influence which, as the handmaid of 
 theology,* it had gained over human intelligence. Never- 
 theless, the reactionary spirit of modern thought caused it 
 
 * " Thcologia non accij)it sua princijiia . . . ab aliis scicntiis laiiquam a 
 superioribus, sf J utilur ei.s tanf|uam infcrionbus ctancillis" (St. Thomas, ^um. 
 Ihcolog., i. q. I, art. 5, aJ fin.).
 
 XC INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to overlook much that was valuable in Scholasticism, and, 
 from pure ignorance, to set out with principles so false and 
 one-sided, that they developed into systems as unwholesome 
 and undesirable as those which they supplanted. The 
 cause of the decay and consequent rejection of Scholas- 
 ticism was, at bottom, its incapacity to deal with the 
 questions to which the subtlety of its own methods and 
 the revival of ancient learning, in many ways hostile to its 
 results, had given birth. This incapacity was due to a 
 defect, inherited by Scholasticism from the philosophers of 
 Greece — the entire lack of a consistent theory of cognition. 
 In spite of the deftest efforts of a Parmenides, a Plato, an 
 Aristotle, and a Plotinus, ancient thought never succeeded in 
 finding any but the crudest material image to express the 
 mode of cognition, or in discovering any principle to vouch 
 for truth. Parmenides, who first found a way out of the 
 absolute scepticism of the system of Herakleitos, by dis- 
 tinguishing being from becoming, placed the former, as the 
 sole object of knowledge, in an ideal world by itself, and 
 accounted for its being known by the rude and childish 
 device of calling it identical with intelligence.* At the 
 same time he abandoned the entire real world of things to 
 contempt, as merely the delusive object of opinion. This 
 theory, in consequence, contained the two greatest defects 
 which a theory of cognition can have : first, it confounded 
 cognition with being, or assumed identity of subject and 
 object ; and, second, it utterly failed to account or vouch for 
 our knowledge of reality. 
 
 In spite of these two cardinal defects, Parmenides' 
 theory of cognition, by a kind of right of primogeniture, 
 which first explanations not unfrequently enjoy, maintained 
 itself, with little or no modification, throughout the whole 
 
 * "To 7ap auTo votlv iai'iv re koX dvcu" {Fraf:;inenta Farm., edit. Mullach, 
 1. 40 ; cf. Buroni, Ddl Essen c del Conoscere, pp. 55 sqq.)
 
 INTRODUCTION. XCl 
 
 course of Greek thought, exercising a determining influences 
 upon it, and even outliving it. Plato, who enlarged Par- 
 menides' ideal world of being, by placing in it the pure 
 forms of things, can hardly be said to have had any theory 
 of cognition or any principle of certainty. His doctrine 
 of reminiscence merely shifts the difficulty, without in the 
 least helping to solve it ; for it is no more easy to conceive 
 how disembodied spirits can cognize ideas having an inde- 
 pendent existence, than to conceive how embodied spirits 
 can cognize things. Plato followed Parmenides in main- 
 taining the world of particulars not to be an object of 
 knowledge. Aristotle, who drew Plato's ideas down from 
 their shadowy heaven and placed them in particular things, 
 as forms universalized through combination with indi- 
 viduating matter, returned, in the most pronounced way, 
 to the two positions of Parmenides, maintaining that there 
 was no science save of universals,* and that the cognition 
 of these was reached by the subject's becoming identical 
 with them.f That Aristotle should have held these views 
 is all the more astonishing that, according to another doc- 
 trine of his, the universal exists only in the particular, and 
 the particular, therefore, is the only true existence.^ 
 
 Although Aristotle made no contribution to the theory 
 of cognition, or in any way made clear the mode of it, he saw, 
 much more clearly than any of his predecessors had done, 
 what was necessary in order to make cognition valid, viz., 
 some first principle of truth presented directly to the mind, 
 in some such way as to place it beyond the possibility of 
 error, and entering as the essential element into every 
 
 * " 'H eVttTTTj^Tj Twv Ka66\ov " {Dc Aft., ii. 5 ; 417 b, 22). 
 
 t '"EttI fjLiv Tuv afev v\7]s rh avr6 iari rh voovv /cat rb vooi'/xej'ov " (//'/i/. 
 iii. 4 ; 430 a, 3). 
 
 + " Ovaia^i iaTW fj KvpLcorara Kol irpwrois Kcd /J-dXicTra \i'yofj.fvr], 't) /uivre HaO' 
 vnoKitixfvov Ttvhs XtyiTai urir' iv xjiroKiifiivif! ni't imiv, olof 6 rh 6.p6pa>iTOs ^ f> tIv 
 iViroj " (Catcg., 5 ; 2 a, II sqq.).
 
 XCl 1 INT ROD UC T!OA\ 
 
 process by which cognition is reached. He saw plainly 
 that demonstration could never lead to true and satisfying 
 knowledge, if either it had to be continued backward, from 
 ground to ground, ad infijiituin, as the sceptics asserted it 
 must, or revolved in a circle of interdependent, mutually 
 supporting hypotheses.* He accordingly concluded that, 
 in order to the possibility of demonstration, there must 
 exist certain principles known to the mind without demon- 
 stration, that is, directly and intuitively.f Unfortunately, 
 he nowhere expressly says what these grounds are, or in 
 what particular sense (ttwc) f they identify themselves with 
 the mind in order to be intuited. He does, indeed, tell us 
 that the intelligence of indivisibles is free from error,§ 
 whence it follows that they must be known through in- 
 tuition and not judgment ; and he also says that the most 
 certain of all principles is that of contradiction, from which 
 we may conclude, with St. Thomas,|l that he held the ulti- 
 mate principle of all truth, and the essential ground of all 
 judgment and demonstration, to be being. At the same 
 time, he never developed this doctrine so as to show that 
 all truth at last rests on a direct intuition ; consequently, 
 he left philosophy involved in the vicious circle which he 
 had shown to be fatal to the attainment of truth.^ 
 
 It need hardly be remarked, after what has been said, 
 that the ancient theory of the mode of cognition was based 
 
 * Who they were that held this opinion in ancient times is not clear — per- 
 haps the Herakleiteans. It has been revived in modern times by Hegel (see 
 under § ii). It is fully refuted by Aristotle, Afial. Post., i. 3 ; 72 b, 25 sqq. 
 
 t " 'H/xeTs Se (pa/xev ovre iracrai' cVjo'ttJiUt)*' airoSeiKTiK^v elvat, aWa rriv rwv 
 a,fx((7wv avaTToSfiKToy. Kal tovO' on avayKouov, (pavepow el yap avayKt] fiev 
 tTTicTTacrfiaj ra irponpa Kai e| wv r) aTr(55€i|is, "aTarai 54 ttotc to ajxecra, ravr' 
 ai'air65iiKTa avdyK-i) elvai " {Anal. Pest., i. 3 ; 72 b, 18 sqq.). 
 
 X " TaCro (to KaQoKov) eV avrj; UCl'1 iari rfj ivxfj" [De An., ii. 5, 6 ; 417 b, 
 23 sqq.). 
 
 § Be A//., iii. 6, I ; 430 a, 26 sqq. Sec below, under § 62. 
 
 II See under § 15. 
 
 1 Sec under § 10, where the way is shown out of this vicious circle.
 
 INTRODUCTION. ' xciii 
 
 upon purely material conceptions, assimilation and inter- 
 penetration, and that it offered no principle to vouch for 
 the objective truth of cognition. The results of these 
 defects, though not fully developed until later, are sufficiently 
 apparent even in Aristotle's philosophy, which, with all its 
 wonderful breadth and acuteness, was so influenced by the 
 childish doctrines of Parmenides, as never to rise above 
 pantheism and materialism, or, more correctly speaking, 
 pantheistic materialism. At bottom, Aristotle's doctrine is 
 this. From all eternity there have existed matter and 
 form in a state of combination. Matter is indeterminate 
 and by itself unknowable.* Form exists as a qualitative 
 multiplicity held together and moved by a unity. This 
 unity is intelligence (vovg), which is, so to speak, the place 
 and form of forms (tottoq d^iZv, tlSog u^mv). By means of 
 matter, which is the principle of individuation, these forms 
 universalize themselves, that is, appear in a multitude of 
 individuals, not any of which are permanent. Since the 
 No7is is God,t it follows that God is the form of forms, con- 
 tinually actualizing Himself as intelligence through matter, 
 which, being essentially receptive, passive, and changeable, 
 renders impossible any permanent individual. Since matter 
 is non-being, the sum of being is God. All that is per- 
 manent is form or species {ixcoq).X 
 
 This pantheistic-materialistic doctrine, which was, after 
 
 * According to St. Thomas, it has not even being, and is, therefore, a non- 
 being : "Materia secundum se neque esse habet neque cognoscibilis est" 
 (Sum. Theolog., i. q. 15, art. 3, 3 m). 
 
 t " 'O Qihs ^ vovs i<n\v ^ iiziKuva ti tov vov " (Aristot., Frag. 46 ; 14S3 a, 
 27 sq. : cf. Melaph., xi. 7 ; 1072 b, -iS : 9 ; 1074 b, 21, etc., etc.) 
 
 X Cf. Tennyson's mournful lines — 
 
 "Are God and Nature then at strife, 
 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
 So careful of the type she seems, 
 So careless of the single life." 
 
 In McmoriaiHy liv. 2.
 
 XCIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 all, only the legitimate outcome of the Parmenidean mate- 
 rialistic theory of cognition, wrought its natural debilitating 
 effect upon Greek thought and life. Some of the later 
 philosophic schools, by a desperate appeal to Platonism, 
 endeavoured to combat it, but in vain. They were even so 
 far from seeing the real source of its defects, that they 
 emphasized more strongly than ever the identity of thought 
 and being — that is, of subject and object — in cognition.* 
 From the Greeks the doctrine passed to the Arabs, by 
 whom it was logically developed to all its pantheistic and 
 materialistic results, and among whom it wrought its baneful 
 effects. Since the days of Scholasticism, it has been 
 currently held that the Arabs misinterpreted Aristotle, 
 foisting upon him pantheism, materialism, and other 
 objectionable doctrines, whereas the Schoolmen, for the most 
 part, correctly developed his doctrines. Hardly anything 
 could be farther from the truth. To be sure, the Arabs did 
 draw from the writings of Aristotle consequences which he 
 probably never dreamt of, and, no doubt occasionally, mis- 
 understood his meaning ; but, after all, their interpretation of 
 Aristotle is much more correct in its main tendencies than 
 that of the Schoolmen — to the religious credit of the 
 latter be it said. The Muhammedan priesthood knew what 
 it was doing when it suppressed Averroistic Aristotelianism. 
 Aristotle, correctly interpreted, will shortly undermine any 
 religion.-f* 
 
 From the Arabs the ancient theory of cognition passed, 
 along with Aristotelianism, into Christendom, and there at 
 once began to make such havoc of faith as to call for the 
 
 * Plotinus says, " Mia fxkv ovv (pvais t6 re tv '6 re vovs" {Envcads, v. 9, 8, 
 edit. Kirchhoff, vol. i. p. 56 : cf. Richter, Kcuplatonischc Sttidicn, iii. p. 26 ; 
 Kirchner, Die Philosophic des Plotin, p. 49 ; Zeller, Philosophic dcr Gi-icchcu, 
 vol. iii. pt. ii. p. 456 sqq.). 
 
 t See Zell, Aristoteles in scincm Verhiiltnissc znr griechischcn Volksrdigion ; 
 also Dc Arislotelc Patriarum Relii^iomnnALstimatorc.
 
 INTRODUCTION. XCV 
 
 serious attention of the Church. At first the ecclesiastical 
 authorities prohibited the writings of Aristotle ; but, finding 
 that such prohibition was of little avail, and also discovering 
 that a very large portion of true Aristotelianism might be 
 accepted with great polemical advantage to Christianit}', 
 and the rest, involving the objectionable consequences, 
 made innocuous by a careful interpretation and adaptation, 
 they subsequently permitted, and finally recommended, the 
 study of them.* The task of interpretation and adaptation 
 was undertaken by the most powerful intellects of the time, 
 men like Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, by the 
 latter of whom it was most successfully performed. For 
 this reason St. Thomas has always justly been regarded as 
 the best representative of Scholasticism. 
 
 In St. Thomas's writings we must carefully distinguish 
 three things : _/?rj/, what he borrowed from Greek and Arabic 
 philosophers, especially from Aristotle ; second^ what he ac- 
 cepted as authoritative from Holy Writ and the doctors and 
 Fathers of the Church ; and, tJiird, what he himself added. 
 Speaking in Aristotelian language, we may call these 
 elements, respectively, the material cause, the final cause, 
 and the formal cause of his writings, himself being their 
 efficient cause. The aim of his writings, as he himself has 
 told us,t was to shape philosophy (and by philosophy he 
 meant especially that of Aristotle) into a pillar of support 
 for Christian doctrine. This was by no means an easy task ; 
 for Aristotelianism, in the first place, is not a logical or 
 consistent system, and, in the second, it tends fundamentally 
 toward pantheism and materialism, both of which are 
 radically opposed to Christianity. St. Thomas, however, 
 did his best, and that best was the enormous body of 
 
 * See Jourdain, Rechcrchcs criliques stir Idge et Vorigine dcs traductions 
 latincs d^Aristote, pp. 202 sqq. ; Rosmini, ArisloteU Esposto, pp. 51 sqcj. 
 t Sutnma contra Gcntes, lib. i. cap. ii.
 
 XCVl INTIiODC'CT/OiV. 
 
 doctrine known as Thomism. He had a profound respect 
 for the teachings of Aristotle, and, though he not unfre- 
 quently, partly from ignorance of Greek and partly from 
 prejudice, misinterpreted them,* he never willingly departed 
 from them except where they stand in pretty direct and 
 evident conflict with Christian teaching.! When the conflict 
 was not over manifest, he frequently accepted principles 
 which, if carried to their logical conclusions, are not only 
 incompatible with each other, but fatal to Christian theology. 
 In this way he built up a system which, although dis- 
 playing an almost marvellous acuteness in the parts, is 
 nevertheless, as a whole, without logical completeness — a fact 
 which is at present rendered only too apparent by the war 
 which has been waging over his meaning, since the recent 
 rehabilitation of his system in the Church through the papal 
 encyclical y^terni Patris. 
 
 Among -the doctrines which St. Thomas accepted from 
 Aristotle without sufficiently considering their conse- 
 quences, was that relating to the mode of cognition. 
 Hence, he not only affirms that " the sensible in act is the 
 sense in act, and the intelligible in act the intellect in 
 act," \ but says distinctly that " knowledge is assimilation 
 to the thing known, and the known is also the perfection 
 of the knower." § He does, indeed, seemingly depart from 
 the doctrine of the ancients in maintaining that we may 
 have a knowledge of particulars ; but, after all, he is 
 obliged to admit that such knowledge is merely reflexive, 
 and, as a consequence, a knowledge of a universal. || Now, 
 
 * Examples of such misinterpretation might easily be adduced. 
 
 t On the extent of these departures, see Talamo, D Aristotelisino della 
 Scolastica nella Storia della Filosofia, and Schneid, Aristoteles in der ScJwlastik. 
 
 \ " Sensibile in actu est sensus in actu, et intelligibile in actu est intcllectus 
 in actu " (Sum. Theol., i. q. 14, art. 2, c. ; q. 55, art. I, 2 m.). 
 
 § " Scientia est assimilatio ad rem scitam, et scitum est etiam perfectio 
 scientis" {Ibid.,<\. 14, art. 2, 2). 
 
 II "Cum non contingat intelligere nisi secundum abstractionem a materia,
 
 INTRODUCTION. XCVU 
 
 these doctrines are not only palpably false, but they utterly 
 fail to render intelligible what they were invented to ex- 
 plain. Indeed, instead of explaining intelligence and sen- 
 sation, they would prove that both are impossible. If the 
 subject and object of intelligence should become one, their 
 relation as subject and object, that is, intelligence, would 
 instantly cease. In like manner, if the principle and term 
 of sensation should become identical, their relation as 
 principle and term, that is, sensation, would be annulled. 
 That such results would follow from the Greek theory of 
 the mode of cognition, the Schoolmen never discovered — 
 a fact which was due to their never clearly understanding 
 the conditions of cognition. 
 
 If St. Thomas, notwithstanding all his distinctions 
 between the active, possible, and passive intellects,* with 
 their various faculties or lights, utterly failed to arrive 
 at any rational or theologically admissible theory of cog- 
 nition, he certainly did something to develop the Ari- 
 stotelian principle of truth, by showing that the principle 
 of contradiction ultimately depends upon the intuition or 
 direct intelligence of being ; f and he only required to 
 apply this principle, so based, in order to place the re- 
 liability of objective cognition beyond doubt. This ap- 
 plication he, unfortunately, never made ; and so Scholas- 
 
 impossibile est singularia ab intellectu apprehendi directe, sed tantum secundum 
 quandam reflexionem. ... Id quod cognoscit sensus materialiter et concrete 
 (quod est cognoscere singulare directe) hoc cognoscit intellectus immaterialiter 
 et abstracte, quod est cognoscere universale" (Ibid., q. 86, art. i, concl. and 
 4 m.). It will be seen from this that St. Thomas attributes cognition to tlie 
 senses ! Indeed, he elsewhere says that " Sensus est qusedam deficicns par- 
 ticipatio intellectus" (Ilnd., q. 77, art. 7, c). What a text for the Evolutionists 
 and Darwinians ! 
 
 * These distinctions were derived from the Arabs and later Greek Peri- 
 patetics. Of the three human intellects of the Schoolmen, only one, the 
 passive, is known to Aristotle. 
 
 t See under § 15, and compare Casara, // Sistetna Filosofuo Kosniiitiatio, 
 dimostrato nel suo Principle fotidameiifale, pp. 27 S(iq.
 
 X C V 1 1 1 IN TROD UC TION. 
 
 ticism remained, not only without a theory of cognition, 
 but also without a universal principle of truth. 
 
 It must be admitted that these two defects were not 
 without their immediate advantages. They made it pos- 
 sible to introduce into Scholastic systems any doctrine 
 regarded as wholesome, without detriment to any logical 
 consistency, as well as to find grounds to refute any doc- 
 trine assumed to be dangerous. They likewise left abun- 
 dant room for the exercise of logical subtlety in the way 
 of reconciling incompatible doctrines. Still, these ad- 
 vantages were not without corresponding disadvantages. 
 In virtue of them, Scholasticism grew up, or, rather, was 
 heaped up, into that unorganized mass of loosely connected 
 doctrines which we find it to be in the fifteenth and six- 
 teenth centuries ; while, at the same time, it developed a 
 logical acuteness which, in view of its want of any all- 
 embracing principle of truth, could not fail, in the long 
 run, to be fatal to it. The consequence was that, in the 
 sixteenth century, Scholasticism fell into disrepute, and 
 left the thinking world in a state of universal philosophical 
 doubt. 
 
 This doubt, though originally born among men who, 
 like Pomponazzi, Bruno, Vanini, had been schooled in 
 Scholasticism, found its first universal expression in De- 
 scartes, who had rather drunk it in from the prevailing 
 scepticism of his time than been led to it by the direct 
 study of philosophy. Under these circumstances it was 
 natural enough that Descartes' scepticism should be in- 
 discriminating, and that he should ignore not only the 
 weak points of Scholasticism, but also its strong ones. The 
 weak points of Scholasticism, philosophically considered, 
 were, as we have seen, its want of a true theory of cog- 
 nition, and its failure to apply the universal principle of 
 truth to cognition, albeit it had really discovered that
 
 INTRODUCTION. XCIX 
 
 principle. Its strong points were that it adhered to the 
 Parmenidean distinction between the ideal and the real, 
 and that, in spite of its childish theory of cognition, it 
 accepted in practice the dicta of common sense. Descartes, 
 as we have said, rejected or ignored the strong points of 
 Scholasticism along with the weak. He not only cast 
 , aside its theory of cognition and its unattested doctrines, 
 but he ignored the distinction between the ideal and the 
 real, and called in question the deliverances of ordinary 
 consciousness. Moreover, instead of developing the ground 
 of the principle of contradiction, as recognized by St. 
 Thomas, into a principle of all truth, and so placing cog- 
 nition upon an irrefragable basis, he so far misunderstood 
 the nature of such a principle that he set up, as the ground 
 of all certainty, a mere fact, of which he had entire sub- 
 jective persuasion, and which not only did not vouch for 
 anything beyond itself, but could not even justify itself to 
 intelligence. " Cogito " he began, and thought he had 
 found the most certain and fundamental of all truths, for- 
 getting that he had not made clear to himself the nature 
 and grounds of certainty, and that "cogito" is a judgment, 
 a mental operation very liable to error, and, therefore, re- 
 quiring some certain universal principle to vouch for its 
 correctness. He was, moreover, so ignorant of the com- 
 plicated nature of judgment as not to see that all judg- 
 ments, except those primitive synthetic ones in which 
 being is predicated of feeling in order to form concepts, 
 imply concepts previously formed and a faculty for holding 
 them together and yet asunder, and that, in setting out 
 with a judgment as the basis of certainty, he already 
 assumed, without proof, many of those processes of in- 
 telligence about whose nature and validity wc arc least 
 certain. All these defects become apparent as soon as 
 Descartes began to use his one certain truth as the basis
 
 C IXTRODVCTIOX. 
 
 for other truths. He found at once that it refused to act 
 as the basis of anything. Accordingly, he first exchanged 
 it for the other more extensive judgment " sum " (I am), 
 thereby tacitly admitting the certainty of the concept of 
 being, and falling into the Parmenidean error of identifying 
 being with thought. Finding that, even after this change, 
 he had advanced no farther than to be sure of his own 
 existence, he next, in order to get beyond himself, assumed 
 the whole content of thought, without attempting to explain 
 how the existence of such a content had come about or 
 was possible. But the validity of this content was the very 
 thing towards which he had cherished systematic and 
 principial doubt ; therefore it could not be accepted without 
 some ground. As the fact of his own existence furnished 
 no such ground, he was obliged to lay down the general 
 and arbitrary law, that whatever is as certain as the judg- 
 ment " I am " is equally true, and, therefore, beyond doubt. 
 In this way his metamorphosed first dictum, instead of 
 being a principle of truth, became a measure of certainty. 
 But, inasmuch as certainty, so long as it is not objectively 
 defined, has no fixed limits, this standard remained utterly 
 subjective, arbitrary, and vague. Descartes himself soon 
 found out its defects, the chief of which was that it gave 
 him only formal truths, and in no way vouched for the 
 objective reality of phenomena. In order to reach this 
 reality he was obliged to have recourse to the old rejected 
 Scholastic paralogism of Anselm, refuted even in Anselm's 
 own time by Gaunilo,* that the idea of God involves His 
 real existence, and then to base his proof for the reality of 
 phenomena on the justice and truthfulness of God. 
 
 That Cartesianism, in spite of its author's determination 
 
 * Cf. St. Thomas's refutation, Sjim. contra Gent., lib. i. cap. xi. ; Sum. 
 TheoL, i. q. 2, art. I, 2 111. Gaunilo's refutation occurs in his work Liber 
 pro Iiisipicntc,
 
 INTRODUCTION. CI 
 
 to accept nothing without rigorous proof and in spite of 
 his far-famed method, is based upon a series of unreasoned 
 facts, vague arbitrary rules, and subtle paralogisms, and 
 that, as a philosophy, it is vastly inferior to Scholasticism, 
 are facts which nowadays hardly require to be noted. Its 
 good effects were almost purely of a revolutionary and 
 negative kind,* while its evil effects were very positive. Of 
 these latter the most momentous was, that it introduced 
 into thought subjective persuasion, as the test and warrant 
 of truth, thereby returning to the long-refuted position of 
 Protagoras, that man is the measure of all things (Travrwv 
 ■\pr\iiaTh)v juirpov avOpojTToc:). Most of Descartes' other 
 doctrines, after stirring up a brief enthusiasm in such men 
 as Geulinx, Malebranche, and Spinoza, were consigned to 
 the great limbo of departed error, into which men " look 
 and pass on " ; but this one has affected the whole of 
 modern philosophy even to our own day. 
 
 Among the early students of Descartes was Locke, who 
 replaced the doctrine that our warrant for the truth of 
 cognition is the veracity of God, by a new theory of cog- 
 nition, and thus saved Cartesianism from the early fate to 
 which that doctrine would otherwise certainly have con- 
 demned it. According to this theory, the mind is a tabula 
 7'asa (ypa/biiuiaTtiov u) prjOtv {map\ii EvrtXe^tifi jtjpafi/iii'ov), 
 upon which all knowledge is written by experience, that is, 
 by internal reflection on external sensation. It is needless 
 to enter into the groundless assumptions, paralogisms, and 
 absurdities of this superficial system. Sufifice it to say tliat 
 it abolished the distinction between the ideal and the rcal,t 
 
 * This remark does not, of course, apply to Descartes' matheinatical and 
 physical doctrines, some of which are of permanent value. 
 
 t It is true that Locke continues to use the word /V/t-a, but with a new 
 signification. Instead of meaning, as it did in ancient times, an object of 
 thought, it means a notion, or term of sensitive perception.
 
 CU INTRODUCTION. 
 
 thereby merged intelligence in sensation, and introduced 
 impression as the explanation of the mode of cognition. 
 Thus, through the united labours of Descartes and Locke, 
 the ancient warrant for truth, viz., the principle of con- 
 tradiction based upon the intuition of pure being, was 
 replaced by subjective persuasion, and the ancient explana- 
 tion of the mode of cognition, viz., the identity of subject 
 and object, by the metaphor of an impression made on 
 a wax tablet ; while at the same time the distinction be- 
 tween ideality and reality, between intelligence and sense, 
 was completely abolished. These changes or innovations 
 explain the whole difference between ancient and modern 
 philosophy, and amply account for all the achievements and 
 failures of the latter, as compared with the former. 
 
 Modern philosophy set out with subjectivism and 
 sensism, and its task has been to develop these to their 
 ultimate consequences. And just as ancient philosophy, 
 with its false doctrine of cognition and its undeveloped 
 principle of truth, found its true expression in the incon- 
 sistent pantheistic materialism of Aristotle, so modern 
 thought, with its subjectivism and sensism, found its 
 actualization in the consistent scepticism of Hume. More- 
 over, just as ancient philosophy, instead of abandoning its 
 first principles when it saw their consequences, eked out 
 an existence in trying to avoid these consequences, by the 
 introduction of mythical and poetic elements into thought, 
 and thus continued to produce romantic systems like those 
 of Plotinus and Jamblichos ; so likewise modern thought, 
 instead of turning its back on subjectivism and sensism, 
 when Hume demonstrated their true nature, merely modi- 
 fied them a little by the introduction of common sense 
 or innate mental forms, and thus made possible the fact- 
 philosophy of the Scotch school and the philosophic 
 romances of Germany.
 
 INTRO D UC TION. C 1 1 1 
 
 When Hume, following upon the heels of Berkeley, had 
 reduced the principles of Descartes and Locke to patent 
 absurdity, philosophic thought in Northern Europe came 
 for a moment to a sceptical standstill. Soon, however, it 
 began to look about for some means which might enable 
 it to move forward toward truth. In Scotland, Reid 
 flattered himself that he had found such means in the 
 data of common sense, but forgot that these data, being 
 the very things which philosophy is intended to explain, 
 must not be assumed. The acceptance of the data of 
 common sense is always necessary in order to enable us 
 to arrive 2il facts ; but is always fatal to any attempt to 
 reach truth as truth. In Germany, Kant imagined that he 
 had found a way out of scepticism, by adopting, as his 
 metaphor for mind, instead of a tabula rasa, a complicated 
 mould, capable, in some unexplained way, of being rendered 
 conscious of its own shape, and thereby also of the shape 
 of what might be put into it. In these shapes Kant 
 thought he had found a way to avoid at once the dog- 
 matism of ancient thought and the scepticism of developed 
 Cartesianism. But Kantianism, in spite of its good inten- 
 tions, profound earnestness, and consequent permanent 
 value, is in reality only systematized scepticism, a putting 
 into positive form of the negative results arrived at by 
 Hume. Instead of explaining the data of common sense, 
 it merely makes an effort to explain them away, denying 
 to man all knowledge of things as they are in themselves, 
 that is, all knowledge of anything objective, and calling upon 
 him to be content with the assurance that his subjective 
 persuasions and imaginings hang consistently together. 
 
 Kant, although he did not see how cognition, whose 
 forms he believed to be all subjective, could ever arrive 
 at certainty of the existence of a world of reality {Dinge 
 an sick) external to the mind, nevertheless did not \-enture
 
 civ INTROD UCTION. 
 
 to deny the existence of such a world. Fichte, his dis- 
 owned successor, was bolder. In order to get rid of the 
 scepticism involved in the admission of an unknowable 
 existent reality, and the illogicality of claiming to know 
 that an unknowable exists, he assumed the standpoint of 
 pure subjectivism, and, in despair of discovering how a 
 subject can know an object without being that object (the 
 old puzzle of Parmenides), he endeavoured to show that 
 the Ego, in positing, that is, in creating itself, necessarily 
 creates, also the non-Ego, or external world. This was anni- 
 hilating scepticism with a vengeance, but it was likewise 
 annihilating common sense and truth of every sort ! 
 
 After Fichte came Schelling, who continued in the 
 same direction. By identifying Fichte's Ego and non-Ego, 
 he arrived at the Absolute, whose evolution, according to 
 him, is the Universe. This doctrine does not differ from 
 that of Heraklcitos, except in being expressed in more 
 abstract terms, ^.^. absolute, instead oi fire {-n-pnaTi^p). After 
 Schelling came Hegel, who, going a step farther, identified 
 the Absolute with thought, and set himself the task of 
 showing how this absolute thought, which he calls The 
 Idea, proceeds to evolve or create itself into a universe of 
 thought and things. The process is an eminently simple 
 one : it is dialectic, and dialectic means the necessary 
 substitution of one word for another. It proceeds in this 
 wise. Thought, in its undeveloped form, is but another 
 word for being, and being is but another way of saying 
 nothing. When you begin a system with nothing, you 
 begin without presuppositions, and your whole business, as 
 a philosopher, is to watch nothing become the universe and 
 yourself Nothing, under this name, combines with itself 
 under its other name, being, and forms nothing-being or 
 being-nothing, just as you please. But for either of these 
 you may — no, indeed ! by dialectic necessity, you must —
 
 IXTRODUCTIOX. CV 
 
 substitute becoming. But becoming, as every clodhopper 
 knows (and the clodhopper, when his testimony is needed, 
 is a great authority), is a process, and a process is all that 
 is necessary to explain the universe, with all its energies, 
 including God. Nothing, under its new name of becoming, 
 has only to keep on combining with itself under its older 
 name, in order to produce all the categories. It has then 
 only to walk out of itself, in order to create the universe 
 of things, and then to come home again to its own bosom, 
 in order to be God, and conscious of itself, as such a 
 universe. In fact, God's universe may be defined as nothing 
 combining with itself and moving in a circle. 
 
 Divested of its mountains of verbiage, this is what the 
 system of Hegel really means in plain language. Parin- 
 riiint }nontes, nascetitr ridiculus nius. Its incredible absurdity 
 for a time hypnotized people, especially susceptible young 
 men, into believing that, by repeating over its phrases or 
 terms, they were identifying themselves with truth and the 
 absolute — in fact, playing God ; for Hegel does not hesitate 
 to say that thought, the absolute and the infinite, is the 
 product of his own spirit, and that the^^^ is the universal.* 
 But this state of intellectual mesmerism soon passed away 
 and men woke to find that philosophy, instead of leading 
 them to truth, had landed them in Absolute Nihilism. Then 
 followed a state of calm philosophic despair. 
 
 Since the collapse or explosion of Hegelian nihilism, 
 whereby the subjectivism and sensism of modern thought 
 were reduced to utter absurdity, there can hardly be said to 
 have been any philosophy among the Northern nations. It 
 is true that, in many places, we still find men who have not 
 
 * Encydopadie, pt. i. §§ 20, 23 ; cf. below, under § 18. By a most vulgar 
 and transparent paralogism, Hegel everywhere substitutes his idea of his own 
 Ego, in the shape of an individuum vagum, for the concrete reality of the abso- 
 lute Ego. But, of course, when by sensism the distinction between things and 
 the ideas or notions of things is wiped ou(, such absurdities neccs-^arily follow.
 
 CVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 followed with open eyes the logical development of thought, 
 clinging, with a kind of religious fondness, to old systems, 
 and trying to resuscitate them, and that we not unfrequently 
 see men who still rejoice in intellectual boyhood, propound- 
 ing long-exploded doctrines in the naive belief that they 
 are proclaiming new truth ; but nowhere do we find a firmly 
 grounded system of thought, advancing triumphantly, like 
 the physical sciences, from truth to truth. Meanwhile 
 earnest men, in despair of finding a theoretical explanation 
 of the system of things, are devoting themselves, with manly 
 resignation, to practical pursuits or the discovery and classi- 
 fication of facts, while their more frivolous brethren, rejoicing 
 in their nothingness, find an excitement, that pays for the 
 trouble of living, in the pleasurable waste of nervous 
 strength. The sustained efforts of the former class of men 
 sometimes shape themselves, on a more or less ample basis 
 of facts, into social or moral theories, such as Comtism and 
 Spencerism, which, in the absence of grounded philosophic 
 truth, offer to assume its place and duties ; but, though they 
 contain much that is valuable, and will yet be more 
 valuable when illuminated with the light of truth, and 
 though they, therefore, meet with much well-deserved 
 respect, they are all rendered practically powerless and 
 ineffective by the despair and scepticism which, however 
 well concealed and ignored, nevertheless lie at the bottom 
 of them. 
 
 While such has been the course and condition of philo- 
 sophy in the Northern nations, England, America, France, 
 and Germany, its history among the Southern nations, and 
 especially in Italy, has been very different Here Scholas- 
 ticism, though much neglected for the last two hundred and 
 fifty years,* has, on account of its close connection with 
 
 * Francis Suaiez, the last of the great Scholastics and the pride of the Com- 
 pany of Jesus, died in 1617, twenty-one years after the birth of Descartes.
 
 INTRODUCTIOX. CVII 
 
 Catholicism, never entirely died out. Toward the middle 
 of last century it received a rude shock from Lockian sen- 
 sism, introduced into Italy by Condillac, and favoured and 
 propagated by the powerful Jesuit Order. The effect of this 
 philosophy, which was expected by its propagators to leave 
 free and ample room for faith, was to open wide the doors 
 of intelligence to doubt and scepticism of the most demora- 
 lizing kind. Hence, in the first quarter of this century, 
 Italy, without having passed through so many phases of 
 subjectivism as the Northern nations, Humeism, Kantianism, 
 Hegelianism, found herself in very much the same condition 
 of philosophic despondency as they, and with perhaps less 
 moral earnestness to carry her through it. And yet it was 
 from Italy, where the philosophic darkness was greatest, 
 that the new philosophic light was destined to rise and shine. 
 That light was the philosophic system of Antonio Rosmini- 
 Serbati, a Roman Catholic priest, whose first great and 
 fundamental work appeared at Rome in 1830, about a year 
 before Hegel's death. Thus for the last half-century, while 
 
 the rest of Europe has been groping about in philosophic 
 darkness, lit only by the last reflected rays of old suns 
 already sunk beneath the horizon into the lap of history, or 
 by the first dim dawn of new suns yet unrisen, Italy has 
 been sitting in the full light of a new philosophic day — 
 almost without being aware of it ! 
 
 In order to understand the true bearing and importance 
 of Rosmini's system, we must recall to mind the defects 
 which proved fatal to the two great previous systems, that 
 of ancient and that of modern times. As we have seen, 
 the defects which destroyed the first were a false theory of 
 cognition and the failure to reduce to a working form its 
 principle of truth and certainty, while those that under- 
 mined the latter were the merging of intelligence in sense 
 and the setting up of subjective persuasion as the criterion of
 
 C\lll IXTRODUCTIOy. 
 
 truth. Rosmini, who was better read in philosophy than any 
 original thinker of modern times, was well acquainted with 
 these defects and their results, and thought out his system 
 fjr the special purpose of remedying the former, and thus 
 getting rid of the latter, so that he might then develop truth 
 upon a firm basis. 
 
 In a work written in 1850, Rosmini informs us that his 
 aims in philosophizing were four : first, to combat error ; 
 second, to reduce truth to a system ; tJdrd, to lay a solid 
 basis for the special sciences ; and, fourth, to erect a ladder 
 by which to ascend to the heights of theology.* These 
 aims he purposed to reach through the free use of reason 
 and an unprejudiced examination, comparison, and, where 
 possible, reconciliation of all previous philosophies, and he 
 spared no labour in order to accomplish the enormous task 
 he thus imposed upon himself. There have been men as 
 well read in the external history of philosophy, and there 
 have been men who were more minutely acquainted with 
 particular parts or epochs of it ; but no man ever better 
 understood its inner essence and development, and no one 
 ev-er more firmly grasped it as a whole. He enjoyed the 
 very rare advantage of being equally well acquainted with 
 ancient, with mediaeval, and with modern philosophy, and 
 of thus being able to do justice to all, and derive aid from 
 all. That he should have found more that was valuable 
 in the first and second than in the third w^as only 
 natural. His opinion of the worth of the philosophy 
 which grew out of the subjectivism of Descartes and Locke 
 was, justly enough, very low. The only thing which he 
 derived from it was the Kantian distinction between the 
 form and the matter of thought, and, indeed, this may be 
 said to be the only positive thing of permanent value that 
 
 * On the Purposes of the Author, a discourse now printed as an introduction 
 to his entire system.
 
 INTRODUCriOX. CIX 
 
 philosophy produced from Descartes to Hegel.* Most of 
 its other products may be assigned to the storehouse of 
 history, where the philosopher, in his proper capacity, ma}% 
 without disadvantage, leave them undisturbed. " From 
 Locke to Kant," says Rosmini, " philosophy, in spite of all 
 restraining efforts, went ever farther and farther astray, 
 becoming ever more entangled, until, at last, men got weary 
 of following, one after another, guides that led nowhere. 
 Hence the schools of our time seem more inclined to nar- 
 rate the adventures of philosophy, a long amusing story of 
 the voyages and wanderings of the human mind, than to 
 teach any philosophy. If philosophy is ever again to be 
 restored to credit among men, I believe we must once more 
 take up the opinions of the ancients, adapting them, as far 
 as possible, to the method and easy style of the moderns, 
 and giving them a fuller and closer bearing upon human 
 life. Moreover, we must never forget that the Scholastics, 
 now so deeply reviled, were, after all, the connecting link 
 between ancient and modern philosophies. For although, 
 toward the close of its history. Scholasticism became de- 
 graded, puerile, and ridiculous, yet it was not so in the works 
 of its great writers, among whom it may suffice to mention 
 Thomas Aquinas, the prince of Italian philosophers and 
 the one in whose dear footsteps it always has been, and 
 always shall be, our endeavour to follow." f 
 
 As a matter of fact, the starting-point and the central 
 principle of Rosmini's philosophy was reached through the 
 development of a thought which St. Thomas had expressed, 
 but whose full bearings he had been prevented, by Ari- 
 stotelian prejudices, from recognizing. We have seen that 
 St. Thomas asserts the first object of intelligence and the 
 ground of the principle of contradiction to be being, etis or 
 
 * He was always unwilling to .acknowledge that he borrowed even this. .See 
 below, under § 122. t Theodicy, 1>k. i. caj). xxix.
 
 ex INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ens comnmne. Pondering upon this thought, Rosmini sud- 
 denly came to see that being is the very essence and form 
 of intelHgence, as distinguished from sensation, and that 
 this form is not subjective, but objective. In other words, 
 he saw that it is the essence of intelHgence to have an 
 object, and that that object is being. In this manner 
 he not only got rid of the identity-theory of cognition 
 maintained by the ancients and the impression-theory held 
 by the moderns, but he likewise did away with subjectivism, 
 drew a clear line between intelligence and sensation, 
 between the ideal and the real, and found the principle and 
 criterion of truth in the essential unity of being as mani- 
 fested under these two forms. In a word, he found in being 
 itself, in the very object without which we cannot cognize 
 or even doubt anything, not only the true explanation of 
 the mode of cognition, but also the indefeasible warrant of 
 all truth. His whole system is merely a working out of the 
 idea of being into all its ramifications and principles, 
 necessary and contingent. 
 
 If Rosmini drew the bare notion of his first principle 
 from the writings of St. Thomas, almost every other great 
 system of philosophy was laid under contribution in order 
 to determine it. Indeed, every other system was made to 
 give up whatever it had of truth in order to arm the 
 principle of the new doctrine. Rosmini agrees with Par- 
 menides in holding that being, one, indeterminate, eternal, 
 is the sole object of intelligence, the essence and form of 
 truth ; but refuses to conclude from this either that being is 
 identical with knowing, or that the Many is unknowable. 
 According to Rosmini, the Many is knowable as a series 
 of objectified subjects. He agrees with Plato that the ideal 
 is inconfusible with the real ; but he denies that ideas 
 subsist separate from the mind and things. According to 
 him, ideas are determinations which the mind, through
 
 IN TROD UCTION. CXI 
 
 subjective sensations derived from the real mode of being, 
 makes in ideal being, which is its constitutive object. He 
 agrees with Aristotle that ideas or forms exist in the mind 
 and in things, and not in a state of separateness ; but he 
 denies that they exist in mind and in things in the same 
 mode. In the former they are objective, ideal, and, there- 
 fore, universal ; in the latter, they are subjective, real, and, 
 therefore, particular. Moreover, the intellect and the 
 intelligible {yovq koi vorjra) are so far from being identical, 
 that they belong to two absolutely distinct modes of being. 
 He makes the same concessions and objections to St. 
 Thomas, but further agrees with him that the principle of 
 contradiction rests on the intuition of being. He agrees 
 with the school of Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, 
 that subjectivism and sensism cannot furnish a ground for 
 truth, but denies that these are the sources from which 
 truth ought to be expected, and affirms that it is the very 
 form and essence of objectivism and intelligence. He 
 agrees with Kant that the form and matter of thought 
 have to be distinguished ; but he denies, Jirst, that thought 
 has a plurality of forms ; second, that its form is subjective ; 
 and, third, that its matter is objective, before it is made so 
 by thought itself. He maintains that the real, as purely 
 such, is always subject (vTroice/^fvov), while the ideal is 
 always object {avTiK.uiii^\'m>) of intelligence. He agrees with 
 Reid * that perception differs from sensation ; but denies 
 that the former is due to an inexplicable instinct in the mind. 
 He holds that perception is due to the very nature of mind, 
 whose term is necessarily an object. He agrees with Fichle 
 that the Ego implies the non-Ego, but he utterly denies 
 
 * Rosmini has great respect for the sane, serious philosopliy of Reid, and 
 really owes it a great deal. Indeed, the Italians are almost the only j^hilo- 
 sophers that have done justice to Reid, whose very soberness and sinii)licily 
 have exposed him to unmerited neglect in more romantic countries.
 
 CXll IXIRODL'CTION. 
 
 that the former creates either, and shows that the Ego is a 
 compound, consisting of a subject and an act whereby that 
 subject affirms itself as an object. He agrees with ScheUing 
 that there is something infinite in the mind, but denies that 
 the mind is for that reason the Absolute. He maintains 
 that the object of the mind is necessary, infinite, and eternal ; 
 whereas the subject is contingent, finite, and, but for its 
 union with the object, transient. He agrees, lastly, with 
 Hegel, that the starting-point of philosophy is being ; but 
 he denies that the ideal being, with which such start is made, 
 produces the real and moral forms of being, that is, develops 
 into the universe and God. He, moreover, denies that being, 
 though immediate, is an hypothesis, and shows that it is 
 reached through a direct intuition, a form of cognition 
 not liable to doubt or error, since for it phenomenon and 
 noilnicnon are necessarily one. 
 
 Rosmini, having discovered the nature of ideal being 
 and its necessary relation to intelligence, was thus able to 
 collect, as determinations of it, all the truths of previous 
 systems freed from their errors, and so, for the first time in 
 the world's history, to lay a solid basis upon which 
 true science might be built up and philosophy brought to 
 stability and repose, after its twenty-five hundred years of 
 weary circling, like that of the carnal spirits, driven by " the 
 infernal hurricane, that never rests." * Upon this basis he 
 proceeded to build up three orders of science : first, sciences 
 of intuition, or of the object ; second, sciences of perception, 
 or of sensible subjects ; and, third, sciences of reflection, 
 or of those subjects which, though beyond the reach of 
 sense, may, through integration of the subjects of sense by 
 means of the object of intelligence, be known in an ideal- 
 negative way, and in part made real by intelligence itself 
 acting through volition. But, after all, when intelligence has 
 
 * "La Inifera infernal, clie niai non lesla " Dante, Inferno, v. 31).
 
 INTRODUCTION. CXIU 
 
 exhausted its powers of intuition, perception, and reflection, 
 there will still remain an infinitude of reality, of which it 
 has only a negative knowledge, so long as this infinitude 
 does not reveal itself, by imparting to it some new faculty, 
 capable of feeling an infinite reality. When this takes place, 
 intelligence will recognize that it has at last found the 
 necessary real subject of its necessary ideal object. This 
 subject is God, whose reality, according to Rosmini, can be 
 known only when He reveals Himself by imparting to the 
 finite intelligence such an increase of objective light — the 
 Light of Grace — as enables it to recognize, in a higher or 
 lower degree, this infinite perfection. Thus Rosmini finds 
 in the limitation of human intelligence a necessary place 
 for revelation and the action of divine grace, and a formula 
 for this revelation and action, such as is certainly not to be 
 found in any other system of thought but his own. Whether 
 or not we follow him in maintaining that Christianity is 
 such a revelation of God, we must admit that he has, philo- 
 sophically speaking, made a much better case for it than 
 ever was made before. His system has, accordingly, made 
 Christianity acceptable to many w^ho otherwise would 
 have rejected it. The table on the next page will show 
 Rosmini's classification of the Sciences. 
 
 Of Rosmini's contributions to the different sciences, the 
 most important are unquestionably those which he made 
 to Ideology, a science toward which he stands in the same 
 relation as Aristotle does to Formal Logic. His Neiv Essay 
 on the Of'igin of Ideas, by which he put an end to sub- 
 jectivism and sensism, will take the place of Kant's Critique 
 of Pure Reason (by which, according to Hegel, an end was 
 put to objective dogmatism, as he contemptuously calls 
 truth *) as the second great philosophic work of the world, 
 
 * Gesch. der riiilosophie^ vol. iii. p. 564 (edit. 1S36).
 
 CXIV 
 
 IXTRODUCTION. 
 
 Philosophy ■> 
 
 /Sciences of J Ideology 
 Intuition \ Logic 
 
 Sciences of / Psycho- 
 Percep- j logy 
 tion j Cosmo- 
 
 l logy 
 
 /Ontolo- 
 / gical 
 Sciences 
 
 Sciences of\ 
 reason- 
 ing 
 
 / Ontology I 
 "atural 
 Theo- 
 logy 
 
 Na 
 
 T 
 
 \ Ic 
 
 Theosophy 
 
 {General 
 Special -^ 
 
 /Teletics 
 
 Ethics 
 
 Ascetics 
 
 Peedagogics 
 
 CEconomy 
 
 Politics 
 
 Cosmo- 
 ^ politics 
 
 Sciences \ 
 of ideal 
 
 Metaphy- 
 sics or 
 Sciences 
 of real 
 
 Sciences 
 of moral / 
 
 beside and before Aristotle's Logic, by which a period was 
 put to sophistry. Next to his contributions to Ideology, 
 Rosmini's most important work was in Psychology, in 
 which he showed, for the first time, the true nature of the 
 Ego, its double relation to being and sensation, and the 
 necessary nature of the term of the latter. His two works, 
 Anthropology and Psychology, which deal with this subject, 
 are acknowledged as marking an epoch in its history, even 
 by those who are most bitterly opposed to the rest of his 
 system. Next in importance to his contributions to 
 Psychology are those which he made to the inferential 
 Science of Morals, for which he discovered a rational and 
 objective basis in the same principle which furnishes the 
 criterion of theoretical truth, showing that right is merely 
 truth accepted as a standard of action. Besides these, he 
 made many and great contributions to other sciences, 
 especially Logic, Law, Politics, Cosmology, Ontology, and 
 Natural Theology. His great work, the Theosophy, which 
 was intended to deal exhaustively with the last three 
 subjects, he did not live to complete, and the same is true 
 respecting several other great works, including one on
 
 INTRODUCTION. CXV 
 
 Mathematics. Many of his writings still remain unpub- 
 lished.* 
 
 From what has been said, it will be easy to understand 
 the relation of Rosminianism to the other systems of our 
 time. To the various sensistic systems, whether calling 
 themselves materialistic or idealistic, it stands in the relation 
 of a corrector and complement; to the spiritualistic systems, 
 in the relation of a guide and foundation. It completes the 
 former, by showing them the way out of mere subjectivity 
 and persuasion into a world of objectivity and truth ; it 
 imparts strength and vision to the latter, by placing them 
 upon a basis of rational insight. To the special sciences 
 it furnishes unity and aim. Doubtless, Rosminianism will 
 in many points undergo modification or correction, and in 
 many more receive extensive development ; but that it 
 supplies a basis for a new and unprecedented progress in 
 philosophy, will hardly be doubted by any one who, with 
 sufficient knowledge of previous systems and sufficient free- 
 dom from prejudice, will give it a thorough examination.! 
 
 If such is the nature and importance of Rosmini's 
 system, it may well be asked why, having been before the 
 world more or less completely for half a century, it has thus 
 far made so little impression upon it, that, outside of Italy 
 and the circle of Rosmini's religious order, its very existence 
 is almost unknown. The answer to this is very simple. 
 Rosmini was an Italian and wrote in Italian ; he was a 
 Catholic priest and a very sincere one ; and, worse than 
 all, he was a staunch opponent of the narrow policy which 
 a certain party in the Church has followed for the last fifty 
 
 * See the list of his works, pp. lii.-lxviii. 
 
 t Some people, fond of finding brief names for things, rather discredit 
 Rosmini's system by calling it Objective Idealism. It is one great merit of the 
 system that, not being one-sided, it is not covered by any one name. If we 
 must call it something, then, to be just, we ought to name it : O^jfclivc Ideal- 
 ism, Suhjectivc Kealisni., and Absi'litU jMcralisin.
 
 ex V 1 LV TK OD UC TION. 
 
 years. The first of these ch-cumstances renders his works 
 inaccessible to the greater number of persons who are fitted 
 to appreciate them ; the second prejudices against them 
 the majority of the remainder, who differ from him in creed ; 
 and the third rouses against them the odhini politiaim of by 
 far the larger number of the thinkers of his own confession. 
 Scholars who have been wont to believe that all modern 
 thought deserving of consideration must come from 
 Germany, France, or England, are not inclined to learn 
 Italian, in order to study the works of a Catholic thinker 
 whose name does not occur in most of the histories of 
 philosophy ; Protestants and Rationalists are not prepared 
 to believe that a profound and rational system of philosophy 
 can originate wath a devoted priest of the Catholic Church ; 
 and Catholics of the ordinary stripe are not prepared to 
 look with favour upon the works of a man who did his best 
 to reform and purify ecclesiastical discipline, and to lead 
 the Church back to her primitive simplicity, humanity, and 
 faith. Hence Rosminianism, having nothing but truth in 
 its favour, has thus far struggled almost in vain against 
 a world of prejudice. Not altogether in vain, however ; for 
 the system has, especially in Italy, a small but select 
 number of very warm adherents, who, in the long run, will 
 do more to propagate it than ten times the number of 
 lukewarm disciples. Truth at last is sure to prevail, 
 and therefore Rosminianism can afibrd to bide its time 
 without haste or fear. When that time comes, the system 
 will be found to contain not only all the truth of ancient 
 and of modern philosophy, combined and systematized, but 
 also a groundwork on which philosophy may henceforth 
 advance, like the other sciences, instead of continuing to 
 be held in scorn as a baseless phantom for ever whirling 
 aimlessly in a vicious circle.
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM.
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Philosophy is the science of ultimate o-rounds. What is 
 
 Philo- 
 sophy ? 
 
 It will be seen, by reference to the tabular view of the 
 sciences in the Introduction, that Rosmini draws a clear 
 distinction between the terms pliilosophy and mctapJiysics, 
 employing the latter in the limited sense of Science of the 
 Real, which, according to him, includes Cosmology, Onto- 
 logy, and Natural Theology. Thus the term mctapJiysics, 
 while narrower than philosophy, is wider than ontology (cf. 
 Preface to Metaphysical Works, in Psychology, vol. i. pp. 5-16, 
 where these distinctions are treated at length). 
 
 The above definition of Philosophy does not differ mate- 
 rially from that of Leibniz, who calls it "the science of suffi- 
 cient reasons" ; or from that of Descartes, who makes it "the 
 science of things evidently deduced from first principles" 
 (cf Hamilton's Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, vol. i. 
 pp. 48-53, where a list of the more famous definitions of 
 philosophy, ancient and modern, are given). It approaches, 
 perhaps, still more closely the definition which Aristotle 
 gives of wisdom {ao^ia), " the science which considers first 
 principles and causes [tTrKXTiifn] tow irpMTiov tip\un> ku\ alruov 
 Biwp-nTiKri." Metaph., i. 2, 982 b, 9) ; and it coincides with the 
 definition of first philosophy, which St. Thomas in part 
 borrows from Aristotle. " The philosopher," says he, mean- 
 ■i B
 
 2 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM 
 
 ing Aristotle, "determines it {i.e. first philosophy) to be the 
 science of truth, not of truth in general, but of that truth 
 which is the origin of all truth, that is, which relates to the 
 first universal principle of being {prinium principiiim essendi 
 omnibus) " {Stimma contra 6^^;z/.,cap. i.; cf Aristotle, JfV/'^^/'//., 
 i-^ i> 993 t>, 20). Rosmini condemns several other defini- 
 tions of philosophy, especially those of Hobbes, Galluppi, 
 Plato, and Wolf Hobbes had defined philosophy as "a 
 knowledge, acquired by correct reasoning, of effects or 
 phenomena from their conceived causes or generations, and 
 also of possible generations from known effects" {Com- 
 pntatio sive Logica, cap. i.). In regard to this Rosmini says, 
 "Since from effects alone or from phenomena alone, with- 
 out the aid of the ideal object, we can know only the 
 proximate causes, or, more properly speaking, the laws, 
 according to which sensible things change, philosophy is 
 destroyed by this definition, and there remain only physics 
 and the natural sciences, usurping the title of philosophy " 
 {Pref. to Metaph. Works, § 14). Of Galluppi's definition, 
 which makes philosophy " the science of human thought,'' 
 he says, " But human thought is only the instrument 
 wherewith philosophy finds and contemplates its objects, 
 and these, among which the greatest is God, cannot in the 
 smallest degree be reduced to thought. It would be a 
 most manifest absurdity to say that the science of God, 
 which certainly belongs to philosophy, treats of nothing 
 but human thought" {Ibid., § 15). In regard to the remark 
 of Plato, that the philosopher " devotes himself always to 
 the idea of being " (ry tov ovtoq aa TrpoaKd/utvog l^ia. Soph. 
 254, A), he says, " On the contrary, the idea of being must 
 guide the human mind to discover the absolute and most 
 real being, this being the end of all its speculations — an end 
 which it reaches, not through any idea, but through affirma- 
 tion and intuition" {Ibid., § 16). To Wolf's definition of 
 philosophy as " the science of things possible," he objects : 
 " Possibilities do not by any means constitute the grounds 
 of things in their completeness, being but a single element 
 of those grounds. Contingent things, for example, do not 
 exist merely because they are possible, but because, being
 
 DEFINITION OF PHILOSOPHY. 3 
 
 possible, a first cause has created them " {Ibid.). These 
 objections help to make clear Rosmini's view of the sphere 
 and functions of philosophy, and the cardinal distinction 
 which he makes between ideal being, which is in itself 
 intelligible, and real being, which is intelligible only through 
 the other. When he asserts {Theosophy, vol. i. § 6) that 
 "the real, as merely real, signifies nothing, not going beyond 
 itself or expressing anything but itself," and that it " goes 
 beyond the power of natural signs, altogether beyond the 
 power of any spoken word, however eloquent, and of any 
 writing, however learned, elegant, and sublime it may 
 appear," he comes very near drawing that distinction 
 which, at first sight, seems to involve an absurd paradox, 
 but which is, nevertheless, strictly true — the distinction, 
 namely, between thought and knowledge. Thought being 
 the mere instrument of knowledge (the quo cognosci- 
 vius, as the Scholastics say), and knowledge being that 
 which thought accomplishes {quod cognosciimis) , it follows 
 that thought and knowledge are absolutely exclusive with 
 respect to each other ; that what is known cannot, as such, 
 be thought ; and that what is thought cannot, as such, be 
 known. It is the failure to observe this distinction that has 
 led Herbert Spencer and others into their strange muddle 
 respecting the unknowable, by which they mean the un- 
 thinkable. Ideas are thinkable but absolutely unknow- 
 able ; things are knowable but absolutely unthinkable. 
 
 In regard to Science, the genus of which philosophy is 
 a species, Rosmini approves of the view expressed by 
 Aristotle in the Later Analytics, where he says, "We 
 think we know a thing absolutely (ticaarov cnrXwg), and not 
 in the sophistical, accidental way, when we think we know 
 the cause which produced it, know that that is the cause 
 of that thing, and know that it must be the cause of that 
 thing" (cap. ii. 71 b, 9 sq.). He, moreover, distinguishes 
 between the subjective and objective senses of the term. 
 "The word scieuce," he says, "has a universal sense, equi- 
 valent to that of cognition ; but it is also employed in 
 a more restricted sense, to signify a particular mode of 
 cognition. In this limited sense it may be regarded cither
 
 4 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 subjectively, that is, as possessed by man, the knowing 
 subject, or objectively, as knowable, as that which is intuited 
 by a mind " {Logic, § 825). In the former view it is equi- 
 valent to philosophy ; in the latter, it means " an entire 
 system of demonstrated cognitions, depending upon a 
 single principle " {Ibid., § 836). 
 
 It is instructive to compare with these views respecting 
 science and philosophy, the definitions of these terms given 
 by Herbert Spencer, " Science," says that writer, " is 
 partially tmijied knowledge ; Philosophy is completely 
 tmijied knowledge" {First Principles, Part II. cap. i. § 37). 
 It follows from this that we have not at present any 
 philosophy, and indeed, that only omniscience is philosophy, 
 and God the only philosopher. 
 
 Ultimate Ultimate grou7ids are the answers which satisfy 
 
 groun s. ^^ j^^^ whys put by the human mind to itself. 
 
 It thus appears that the final, self-sufficient test of truth 
 is perfect mental satisfaction, the cessation of all desire for 
 further evidence or explanation. This satisfaction, being 
 of the nature of a feeling, is immediate, given, and, there- 
 fore, incapable of explanation. Why does truth satisfy ? 
 is a foolish question. We may, nevertheless, discover and 
 state the conditions under which such satisfaction is felt, 
 and, in so doing, we shall discover and state the conditions 
 of truth itself It is almost unnecessary to say that by 
 grounds {ragioni) Rosmini does not mean causes. Indeed, 
 he finds fault with Aristotle for confounding the two terms. 
 "What Aristotle calls cause {ahia)," he says, "ought more 
 correctly to be called ground, the term properly belonging 
 to the order of the knowable, with which he is dealing" 
 {Logic, § 827). The passage referred to is the one quoted 
 above, p. i. According to Rosmini, a ground is "that light 
 which enables the mind {spirito) to know that what any 
 given judgment affirms in the order of possibility, is"
 
 ULTIMATE GROUNDS. 5 
 
 {Ibid., § 188). "A ground is always an idea, simple or 
 complex ; but the terms ground and idea differ as two 
 different modes of regarding the same thing. Ground 
 indicates the logical necessity which the mind feels of 
 assenting to a possible judgment. It is, therefore, a virtue 
 which emanates from the intuition of the necessary nexus 
 between two or more ideas, which nexus, however, as 
 intuited by the mind, may likewise be called an idea " 
 (Ibid., § 192). "The grounds which justify assent to any 
 possible judgment are either intrinsic or extrinsic. A 
 ground is intrinsic when the judgment requires no other 
 proof, foreign to it, in order to appear true to the mind 
 of any one who examines it with sufficient care. ... A 
 ground is extrinsic when the mind, in order to be con- 
 vinced of the truth of a possible judgment, is obliged to 
 have recourse to some judgment different from the first " 
 (Ibid., §§ 193, 195). In reference to the relation of grounds 
 to reality, we have the following statements: — "Things real 
 must be treated in the doctrine of tiltimate grounds. First, 
 because ground is a word whose signification is relative 
 to that whose ground is sought, and that whose ground is 
 sought is the real. Hence it follows that real things, as 
 such, do not constitute the object of philosophy, but 
 merely its occasion and condition. Philosophy deals with 
 them, because it deals with their possibilities and their 
 ultimate sufficient grounds. Second, because the first 
 ground requires a reality coessential with it, . . . and hence 
 cannot be fully known without the knowledge of that first 
 reality which constitutes it, not as a ground, but as a 
 complete and absolute being containing within itself the 
 ground of all things " {Psychology, Pref, § 13). It is need- 
 less to say that ultimate grounds are, of necessity, intrinsic, 
 immediate, and self-evident. Rosmini, in common with 
 Aristotle * and St. Thomas,t and in opposition to Hegel,} 
 
 * " 'Ai/a7Kr) Koi tt/i/ OTroSfi/CTi/crjf iirt(TTr]fj,riv e^ a\7}6(oi' r elpai Kal tzpwTwv Koi 
 a/x4(TCiiv Kol yvoopifxuTepwi' koI irporepoDV Kal alTiwu tov aufXTrtpdafxaros" {.-Inal. 
 Post., ii. 71 b, 20 sq.). 
 
 t " Per se, et directe intellectus est univcrsalium,sensub autcm singularium " 
 {Sumt>ia Theol., p. i. q. Ixxxvi., concl.). 
 
 X " Logibch ibtder Anfang, indcm cr im Elcmcnlc dcs frci fur sich sciciiden
 
 6 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 whom he calls the "foe of all immediateness " {Theosophy, 
 vol. i. § lo), maintains that all ultimate knowledge is of 
 this kind. Of the nature of ultimate grounds, Rosmini 
 speaks at length in his Logic. " If we wish to determine 
 the meaning of this expression, ultimate grounds" he says, 
 " we must take into consideration certain distinctions, for 
 the reason that grounds may be called ultimate which are 
 such, not in themselves, but with respect to the limits of 
 human nature. Whatever these limits be, it is clear that 
 we cannot speak of any ultimate grounds except with 
 respect to these, because absolutely ultimate grounds, if 
 they go beyond the confines of human nature, cannot be 
 desired or sought by it, and hence the want of them can- 
 not cause it any disquiet. In order, therefore, that the 
 human mind, when it has reached the ultimate grounds, 
 may be conscious that these are ultimate for it (supposing 
 that they are not likewise ultimate in themselves), it must 
 recognize its own limits, and clearly understand that, in 
 carrying its researches further, it would be attempting the 
 impossible" (§ 1163). "We must, therefore, consider that 
 there are three supreme grounds, categorically distinct. 
 These may be called the formal ground, the real ground, 
 and the moral ground. The supreme formal ground is 
 given to man in the idea of being, and is the principle of 
 all formal logic. It is also that which enables him to 
 cognize real and moral grounds. But the supreme real 
 ground is not given to man by nature, since this reality is 
 God Himself, and by nature man does not perceive the 
 reality of God. Possessing, then, the supreme formal ground, 
 and, in it, the power of knowing all real grounds, even the 
 supreme one, if they were given to him — that is, if they 
 were communicated to his feeling — he has the faculty of 
 recognizing his own limits, in other words, of recognizing 
 that it is not granted him to know all that he could know, 
 and hence he concludes that there may and must be, 
 beyond these limits, something unknown to him. If now 
 we give to this act (slancio), by which the human mind 
 
 Denkens, im reinen Wissen gemacht warden soil" [Los^ik, vol. i. p. 6i ; cf. 
 Trendelenburg, Logische Untersuchungen, vol. i. pp. 36, sqq.).
 
 ULTIMATE GROUNDS. 7 
 
 divines that there is something beyond all that it knows, 
 the name of huniau super intelligence, we shall see clearly 
 that this is not d. faculty {potensa), but di function of reason, 
 whereby, comparing the field of the possible, given to it in 
 the idea, with the field of the real, given to it in feeling, it 
 sees that the former is infinitely more extensive than the 
 latter, and that the portion of reality which it can touch 
 does not contain the supreme ground ; that is, the being 
 which is real in its essence, which alone can be the type 
 of all reality, and hence also alone can be the ground of 
 all finite realities. Again, as regards the supreme moral 
 ground, this lies in the essential and total order of being, 
 inasmuch as being, thus intrinsically ordered, is in itself 
 a good to all the wills that cognize it. Now, man, in the 
 idea, possesses this order virtually, but it does not become 
 actual to thought except in real being. Of this real being 
 he knows a part positively through feeling, and that part 
 which he knows by nature in this way implies infinite 
 being ; then, through the function of human superintelli- 
 gence, he knows, negatively and confusedly, infinite real 
 being, in which alone the supreme moral ground is ac- 
 tualized, because in it alone is the essential and total order 
 of being. Hence, according to nature, man cannot know 
 the supreme moral ground, except in a negative and 
 virtual way. Hence the imperfection of morality in his 
 actual existence. There are, therefore, two main limits to 
 human intelligence. First, it cannot know the supreme 
 real ground, and, therefore, cannot have a single material 
 criterion for all realities. It is for this reason that we have 
 been obliged to lay down the rule that every specific per- 
 ception of reality is a criterion for that species whereof that 
 perception is assumed as the type. Second, it can know 
 only virtually the supreme moral reason" (§§ 1163, 1165). 
 Of course, it follows directly from this, that, in our present 
 life, we find no entire intellectual satisfaction, at least in 
 a natural way. " Since man," says Rosmini, " knows the 
 supreme formal ground, and, through it, these two limits, 
 he aspires to extend himself to the infinite, and desires 
 a state in which these limitations shall cease. However,
 
 8 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 when a man reaches the clear conviction that such Hmits 
 cannot be removed in the present life, he resigns himself 
 to this necessity, and thus finds that satisfaction of intellect 
 which is possible in mortal life." In other words, to quote 
 the famous saying of Goethe, " Man is not born to solve 
 the problem of the universe, but to find out where the 
 problem begins, and then to keep himself within the limits 
 of the knowable." 
 
 3- 
 
 Phiio- Ultimate grounds are either absolute or re- 
 
 geSerai latlve. The former are, strictly speaking, alone 
 
 special. ultimate, and, as such, constitute the scope of 
 
 General Philosophy ; whereas the latter are ulti- 
 mate only in reference to a determinate branch 
 of science, and hence form the scope of Special 
 Philosophies, such as those of mathematics, 
 physics, history, politics, art, etc. 
 
 Though Rosmini prefers the term ultimate grounds, he 
 does not object to calling them likewise first grounds. 
 " Ultimate grounds',' he says, "and first groimds are equi- 
 valent expressions, because what is last in the one direction 
 of thought is first in the other" {Purposes of the Author, 
 § 9, n.). Compare the Aristotelian doctrine, that what is 
 first in essence or nature is last in generation,* or, as 
 St. Thomas puts it, " What is first and better known in its 
 nature is last and less known relatively to us." f 
 
 Of the relation of Philosophy to the other sciences 
 
 * " 'Evaj'TiaJS eTr) 'ry\s yevecrews ex^' "'"' '^^^ ovcrias' to, yap vcrrepa ttj ytyeaei 
 irpSrepa rijv (pvffiv earl, Koi trpSiTov rh rrj yeveffei T€\€VTa7ov " [De Part. Ajiitn. , 
 i. I ; 646 a, 24 sq. ). Cf. Physica, viii. 7 ; 261 a, 14 : 9 ; 265 a, 22 sq. ; and 
 Eucken, Die Methode der Aristotelischen Porschung, p. 13. 
 
 t " Quae sunt priora et notiora secundum naturam, sunt posteriora et minus 
 nota secundum nos" {Sum. Theol., i. q. 85, art. 3, l). Cf. Aristotle, " Oh yap 
 rav-^hv irp6Tepov Trj ((>v(Tei Kal irphs Tjfias -npSrepov ov'5\ yva>pi/j.(i)Tepov Kal r)fuy 
 yvw^nxdrepov" [Anal. Post., \. 2; 71 b, 35 sq.).
 
 POINT OF DEPARTURE. 9 
 
 Rosmini says, " The ultimate grounds outside of the 
 world and the ultimate grounds in the world, these form 
 the object of philosophy, which thus occupies the last two 
 and highest steps of the pyramid we have described. 
 Hence philosophy remains clearly separated from, and 
 elevated above, the other sciences, as the guide and mother 
 of them all. These form the lower steps of the pyramid, 
 depending upon the highest two and receiving their light 
 from them " {Purposes of the Aitthor, § 9 ; cf St. Thomas, 
 Sicju. TheoL, \\} q. 6, art. i, i m.). 
 
 In attempting to discover the ultimate grounds Point of 
 
 1 • 1 11 • • > departure. 
 
 which shall satisfy its own last spontaneous whys, 
 the human mind must, of necessity, begin by 
 recognizing the state of its own cognitions and 
 of its own persuasions. It must then go on and 
 endeavour to supplement and complete these 
 cognitions in such a way as to satisfy the in- 
 telligence, which imperatively demands a ground 
 for everything it knows, and allows the mind no 
 rest until it has found a self-sufficient ground, that 
 is, a ground which calls for no further ground. 
 
 The gist of this section is, that philosophy sets out with 
 simple, direct, unquestioning observation of the present 
 facts of consciousness, and then proceeds to search for 
 another fact of consciousness, a ground or idea, which shall 
 so unite and supplement all others as to relieve the mind 
 from the discomfort which disconnection and incomplete- 
 ness always cause it. Philosophy, in this view, — and it is a 
 correct one — may be defined as an explanation of the facts 
 of consciousness ; for even God and the Universe, in so far as 
 they require or admit cxplanatioti, number as objects among 
 these facts. That which is not known requires no c.xpla-
 
 lo PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 nation. To explain existence in itself is a task beyond 
 the reach of philosophy. Indeed, the phrase is self-con- 
 tradictory ; for it means, to explain a fact of consciousness, 
 which, by the very hypothesis, does not exist. This doc- 
 trine does not involve the conclusion that some would 
 draw from it, that therefore we do not kiiozv things. The 
 opposite conclusion is the true one. We do know things, 
 and it is precisely for that reason that they do not require 
 or admit explanation. We do not, indeed, think things ; 
 but, as has been already remarked, knowledge and thought 
 are mutually exclusive. 
 
 This section shows how different Rosmini's starting- 
 point was from that of Hegel. Indeed, there are few things 
 which Rosmini so strongly opposes as the doctrine of a 
 " presuppositionless beginning" in philosophy. His refu- 
 tation of this doctrine {Logic, §§43-50 ; Theodicy, i. §§ 10, 
 19,20) is, in many points, superior to that of Trendelenburg 
 {Logische Untersiichiingen, i. pp. 36-140, and Die logische 
 Frage in Hegel's System, Leipzig, 1843; cf. §§ 11, 53). 
 Rosmini cordially agrees with Kant and his school (cf. 
 Kritik der reincn Vermmft, Einleitung, i.) in holding that 
 " all our knowledge begins with experience ; " but he finds 
 grave fault with them for not clearly showing what they 
 mean by experience. His strictures on this omission are 
 worth quoting. " Modern philosophers," he says, " generally 
 admit that all human knowledge comes from experience ; but 
 they do not trouble themselves to ask, What is experience .-* 
 Is it meant that experience is the facts .'' The facts by 
 themselves cannot form experience, because, until the facts 
 are known by me, they are, with reference to my know- 
 ledge, as if they did not exist. By experience, therefore, 
 is meant the facts cognized by me. If this is the meaning 
 of the word ' experience,' we must go on and inquire what 
 kind of cognition is here meant. Is it meant that ex- 
 perience is the facts cognized by the senses alone } The 
 question is absurd : with the senses alone they cannot be 
 cog?iized. When I say that I know a fact with my senses 
 alone, I have removed from that fact the whole of my 
 thought regarding it. The facts, as they then remain, are
 
 DIFFERENT FORMS OF MENTAL QUIET. ii 
 
 sensations and nothing more. There is no comparison 
 between them, or relation of any kind. These facts, cognized, 
 as the very improper expression is, by the sense alone, can 
 neither be written nor spoken, because language has no 
 individual words fitted to express them, and because, if 
 I joined them to some sensible sign, in order to make them 
 speakable, I should be obliged to make some reflection on 
 them, which is contrary to the hypothesis that I know 
 them through my senses alone. Experience, therefore, 
 must be the facts as really known. But into this know- 
 ledge there enters necessarily intelligence, which adds to the 
 facts a certain universality, considering them in relation to 
 being, and, through being, in relation to each other, and, 
 in this way, forming classes or species. This is certainly 
 the only kind of experience that can or does produce our 
 cognitions. But if this is the experience which we mean 
 when we say that all our cognitions come from experience, 
 we must, first of all, inquire. What is intellectual cognition 
 of facts f What is that intellect with which we form, or at 
 least complete, this experience ? How must such a faculty 
 of cognizing be constituted, in order that it may be able to 
 produce such experience .'' This last question is equivalent 
 to, What must the intellect have that is innate .'' or, What 
 are the conditions under which the experience we speak of 
 is possible 1 " {Nezv Essay, vol. ii. § 398). What Vv'ould 
 Rosmini have said to those philosophers who define Logic 
 as " the science of the laws of thought," without ever in- 
 quiring, What is thought } 
 
 The mental rest or quiet here meant is only Different 
 a scientific qidet, which the inquiring mind reaches mental 
 when it finds scientific replies to its own inevitable '^""^ " 
 interrogations. But it must not be supposed that 
 the mind always puts such interrogations to itself. 
 Many minds never do so at all, or, if they do, at
 
 12 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 least put far fewer than they mig-ht put. The mind 
 which does not question itself at all enjoys rest 
 and quiet. The same is true of the mind, which 
 questions itself up to a certain point and no 
 further, as soon as it has found replies to its 
 limited number of interrogations, although it may 
 not have arrived at ultimate reasons, these not 
 being essential to its quiet. Hence the science 
 of ultimate grounds, that is, philosophy, is not 
 necessary to the mental quiet of the m.ajority of 
 mankmd, who content themselves with a much 
 more limited kind of cognition. Such cognition, 
 though not philosophical, may be true and certain, 
 and may thus afford a most reasonable per- 
 suasion. 
 
 The distinction here drawn between the two kinds of 
 mental satisfaction is a most important one, involving not 
 only the whole distinction between reason and faith, but 
 the whole question of the nature of assent. To this latter 
 subject Rosmini devotes the first book of his Logic (pp. 
 9-85), the most original part of the whole work. A few 
 sentences from this treatise will make the distinction clearer. 
 " Assent is the act with which a man adheres voluntarily to 
 the object which stands before his intelligence. To assent 
 to an object means to affirm it with subjective authority" 
 {efficacia, § 85). "Assent is not one of those acts of the 
 spirit which produce new cognitions, but it is an act by 
 which a person appropriates the cognitions which stand 
 before him. We are in the habit, nevei'theless, of saying 
 that assent produces cognitions, because by means of it a 
 person makes cognitions his, and obtains persuasion * of 
 
 * Persuasione. After some hesitation, I have concluded to render this word 
 by its etymological equivalent, although in many cases conviction would have 
 read better. Rosmini distinguishes the two. " To convince" he says, "is to 
 give a man demonstrated cognitions, and regards the intellect ; to persuade is 
 to move the will to assent " {Logic, § 1 144).
 
 ASSENT. 13 
 
 them" (§ 86). "Assent is a species o{ judgment ; but 
 not all judgments are assents. Judgments are of two 
 kinds, ideal and real. Ideal jtidgiiients are those which 
 present themselves to the mind as possible, without assent 
 or dissent on the part of the person to whom they are 
 presented. Real judgments are those which, after being 
 presented to the mind as possible, receive assent" (§ Zy). 
 " Possible judgments are of two kinds, those which are 
 composed of mere ideas, as. The genus is more exten- 
 sive than the species ; and those which are composed of 
 ideas and realities, as, Rome exists " (§ %'S). " Hence, 
 assent is that act whereby a man produces real judgments, 
 . . . which he does only after having discovered by in- 
 tuition the possible judgments " (§ 89). " Between the 
 possible judgment and the assent there lies the question, 
 Shall I assent to the possible judgment ? " (§ 93). " So long 
 as the question lasts, . . . and is not answered by assent, 
 there is a mental condition which is termed ignora7ice " 
 (§ 96). " The effect which assent produces in the mind 
 {animo) \s persuasioti, that is, persuasion that the judgment 
 assented to, whether positive or negative, is true. Per- 
 suasion is not cognition. On the contrary, there are 
 erroneous persuasions produced by assents given to ideal 
 judgments " (§ 102). " This appropriation of cognition, 
 termed persuasion, and performed by means of assent, is 
 usually denominated subjective eognition, the term objective 
 cognition being reserved for the cognition, properly so 
 called, which precedes the assent" (§ 103). ^^ Subjective 
 cognition adds nothing to objective cognition, but it adds 
 something to the subject, namely, the persuasion of that 
 cognition " (§ 104). " To what faculty does assent belong ? 
 To the will or to the understanding } " (§ 129). " We reply 
 that the power of assent is a special function, which must 
 be accurately distinguished from both understanding and 
 will" (§ 130). "The subject performs certain acts by 
 means of its faculties, others directly through itself, without 
 employing any faculty. . . . The act of affirming what it 
 understands the subject performs directly through itself, 
 since in that act it does nothing but accommodate itself
 
 14 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 to what it understands" (§ 131). "A man cannot give 
 assent to a possible judgment present to his mind (spirito), 
 unless he sees an efficient ground which attests its truth. 
 What then is a ground ? By ground we mean, that light 
 which enables the mind to know that what any given judg- 
 ment affirms in the order of possibility, IS" (§ 188). "Be 
 it observed that this IS signifies the truth of the affirmation, 
 because, if a thing is, it is true" (§ 189). "This light is 
 logical necessity" (§ 191). "The grounds which justify 
 assent to any possible judgment are either intrinsic or 
 extrinsic" (§ 193). "Evident judgments are those which 
 are made in regard to the idea of being and its immediate 
 applications'' (§ 196). "The extrinsic grounds which show 
 the truth of possible judgments and render assent to them 
 obligatory are — (i) primitive judgments with respect to all 
 judgments which are not primitive but derivative ; (2) an 
 infallible authority" (§ 212). " Authority, in its proper sense, 
 means the external testimony which a trustworthy person 
 renders to the truth of a possible judgment " (§ 21 5). " That 
 which induces a subject to give an assent is {a) either an 
 instinct, not guided by any ground, as when the assent is 
 determined by the instinct of the marvellous ; or {b) a 
 purely spontaneous act of will, such as takes place in per- 
 ceptions and in all voluntary assents given without re- 
 flection ; or ic) an act of free will, which chooses between 
 the ground for assent and that for non assent, a choice 
 which always takes place in the order of reflection ; or {d) 
 an act of free will, which creates or forges a reason, in 
 accordance with which the assent is given in the same way 
 as happens in formal errors, which likewise belong to the 
 order of reflection" (§ 221). "By means of reflection, the 
 %vill becomes free from necessity. The force of free 
 volition, under certain conditions, overpowers instinct and 
 voluntary spontaneity. By means of this force, a person 
 may prevent instinctive assent" (§ 222). " Gratuitous assent 
 is diff"erent from that assent which a man gives without 
 being able to assign a ground to himself or to other people. 
 . . . The really gratuitous assents . . . are those which 
 have no ground, but are determined by blind cause" (§ 226),
 
 POPULAR AND PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWING. 15 
 
 " There is error every time that there is attributed to a 
 subject a predicate which does not belong to it. Hence 
 the point where the error lies is the nexus between the 
 predicate and the subject" (§ 244). Much to the same 
 effect may be found in Dr. Newman's Grammar of Assent. 
 
 6. 
 
 But this lower form of mental quiet is not Popular 
 
 • 1 1 . A • 1 11 ^""^ philo- 
 
 necessarily lastmg. A mmd possessed by strong sophicai 
 
 , r. . . -,.,., knowing. 
 
 and nrm convictions, 01 which it has never ex- 
 amined the ultimate grounds, may suddenly find 
 itself confronted by an ultimate za/iy. Will it 
 then remain in a state of unquiet and uncertainty, 
 until it has found the needed reply ? Here we 
 must distinguish between repose of mind and 
 repose of spirit. The former demands demon- 
 stration, the latter only persuasion ; and these are 
 two widely different things. Demonstration has 
 something necessary, almost fatal, about it, while 
 persuasion has much that is voluntary. Hence 
 it is that a man may have firm persuasions, with- 
 out being able to assign the precise grounds of 
 them. Moreover, amongc these unreasoned con- 
 victions there are some that are blind, and some 
 that are rational. Blind convictions are arbitrary, 
 groundless, and often erroneous, although, by 
 accident, they may be true. Rational persuasions, 
 which a man holds, without being able to assign 
 the grounds of them, are such as rest upon really 
 solid grounds, known indeed directly, and com- 
 prehended suf^ciently to command assent, but not 
 sufficiently analyzed by reflection to enable him
 
 l6 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 to express them either to himself or others, if he 
 is questioned about them. The mind, the per- 
 suasions of such a man lack something, namely, 
 the development of reflection ; nevertheless, he 
 possesses truth and a persuasion of the truth, 
 strong enough to produce repose of spirit. He 
 may even enjoy repose of mind, if, by refusing 
 attention to his inner questionings, he succeed in 
 stifling them. He is then in the same condition 
 as if the questions had not been put. 
 
 Philo- 
 sophy the 
 restorer of 
 repose of 
 intellect. 
 
 But the mind of such a man, that is, his faculty 
 of demonstration, considered with reference to 
 itself, and not with reference to persuasion and 
 quiet of spirit, or to the possession of truth and 
 certitude, has not satisfied its own demands, and, 
 hence, has not found repose. Philosophy is what 
 restores scientific repose of intellect. 
 
 Difference 
 between 
 demon- 
 stration 
 and per- 
 suasion. 
 
 8. 
 
 There is, therefore, a popular knozving, suf- 
 ficient for the purposes of ordinary life, and there 
 is z. philosophical knowing, calculated to satisfy the 
 demands of the faculty of demonstration. The 
 latter is the work of reflection, carried forward to 
 the discovery of ultimate grounds. 
 
 Rosmini devotes a considerable number of pages in his 
 New Essay to clearing up the distinction between direct, 
 popular, and philosophical cognition. " Direct cognition"
 
 DEMONSTRATION AND PERSUASION. 17 
 
 he says, " consists of intellective perceptions and the ideas 
 which detach themselves from perceptions. Reflection, 
 set in motion by language, then comes forward, and its 
 first steps are those whereby it marks the relations, im- 
 mediate or almost immediate, of the things perceived and 
 apprehended. This first operation of reflection does not 
 yet analyze the single perceptions and ideas of things. It 
 leaves them entire * as they were when it first acquired 
 them, merely contemplating them together. It is still a 
 synthetic operation of which all persons are capable. 
 Hence, it forms a large part, not to say the whole, of 
 common or popular science. Philosophical science, on the 
 contrary, begins with the analysis of simple objects. 
 When things perceived submit themselves to analysis, 
 they acquire a singular light, which is what ennobles the 
 wisdom of the wise. This analysis may be considered the 
 starting-point of philosophy. Setting out from it, phi- 
 losophy proceeds to confirm those great relations between 
 beings {esseri) which the great mass of mankind have 
 already observed, and, we might almost say, intuitively 
 noted. Hence, popular science occupies an intermediate 
 position between direct science on the one hand, and 
 philosophical science on the other. It springs from a first 
 reflection, whereas philosophical science requires a second 
 reflection. The first strong reflection of popular cognition 
 adds no new matter to cognition, but merely discovers new 
 immediate relations in it. The reflections which follow 
 bring out other relations between the preceding cognitions. 
 If direct cognition enjoys immunity from error, the case 
 is very different with popular cognition, which is already 
 partly the fruit of reflection, not to say also partly of 
 imagination. Philosophical cognition, moreover, is, of all 
 the forms of cognition, the most liable to error, being the 
 offspring of a more remote reflection" (§§ 1 264-1 267). 
 Rosmini's distinction between the three kinds of knowing 
 is almost exactly the same as that which Aristotle draws 
 between perception (maOiimg), experience {ifmtipia), and 
 
 * "XvyKexviJ-iva, as Aristotle says : see Pliysua, i. i, 1 84 a, 21 sq. 
 
 c
 
 i8 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 theory ijkxvy]) or science (fTrtor/'j^)]).* To Aristotle's dis- 
 tinction between theory and science, viz. that the former 
 deals with production or becoming, the latter with being 
 ("'^O av iv airaaiv ev kv\) eKeivoig to avro, Te)(iJnQ (^PX^ '^^'- 
 lTriaTy]ni]g, lav plv rr^pi rriv yivetriv, tI^^vtjc, sav ol irepi to 6v, 
 l7naT{]iur}g." Anal Post, ii. 19, lOO a, 7, seq.), Rosmini has 
 nothing corresponding. The distinction between special 
 sciences and philosophy comes very near it. St. Thomas, 
 of course, follows Aristotle, as do the Scholastics generally. 
 Kant's distinction between experience {Erfahrimg), under- 
 standing, and reason t is equivalent to the one made by 
 Aristotle, since Kant's experience corresponds to Aristotle's 
 perception. Even Hegel's distinction of the stages of 
 knowing into consciousness, self-consciousness, and reason 
 is not essentially different,! although under the term reason 
 are included religion, which, according to Rosmini, is, as 
 such, no part of philosophy at all (§ 151), and absolute 
 knowing, which he would attribute only to God {Theosophy, 
 i. § 11). It is needless to say that Rosmini totally rejects 
 Hegel's process, as well as the identification of reason and 
 spirit {Geisi) which results from it§ {Theosophy, vol. iv. 
 p. 459). 
 
 Rosmini has treated, at great length, of the nature of 
 persuasion, the difference between it and certainty, truth, 
 and conviction, and the part which the will plays in it 
 {Logic, §§ 136 sq., 1099 sq. ; New Essay, §§ 1335 sq., 
 1044 sq.). 
 
 He treats also, at considerable length, of the nature 
 of mental satisfaction {appagamento). "We distinguish," 
 he says, ^^satisfaction from persuasion, considering persua- 
 sion as an effect or state which remains in a man every 
 time he adheres and assents to any truth, but which does 
 not necessarily take away his curiosity to discover a further 
 ground, whereas satisfaction is a more universal effect or 
 state of the mind, causing it to search no further, and 
 
 * Metaph., i. i ; cf. the commentaries of Schwegler and Bonitz. 
 t Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Einleitung. 
 + Phcsnomenlogie des Geistes, throughout. 
 § Phan. des Geistes, pp. 327, sqq.
 
 SATISFACTION AND PERSUASION. 19 
 
 leaving it without the thought that there is anything further 
 to search into. . . . Satisfaction may be absolute or rela- 
 tive " (Z(?^/c, § 1 161). "Absolute satisfaction arises when 
 these two extremes are realized : (i) That the mind shall 
 have succeeded in knowing the ultimate grounds of things, 
 so that no further research remains possible ; (2) That it 
 shall be conscious of having thus succeeded. If it did not 
 recognize as ultimate grounds those which it has dis- 
 covered, even though they really were such, it would still 
 feel as if it ought to continue its search and therefore 
 would not be satisfied" {§ 1162). Inasmuch as absolute 
 ultimate grounds are inaccessible to man on account of the 
 limitations of his nature, he must content himself with 
 grounds that are ultimate with respect to these (see note 
 to § 2). " For satisfaction of mind, therefore, it is necessary. 
 First, that a man consciously, and therefore reflectively, 
 succeed in reaching the ultimate formal ground ; Second, 
 that being unable to find the last real ground, he make 
 allowance for his impotence and resign himself to the 
 necessity of the limit imposed on him by nature" {Logic, 
 § 1 168). But as such satisfaction is only relative, it follows 
 that this is the only form of mental satisfaction possible 
 in this life. 
 
 In endeavouring to discover these grounds, a The first 
 man must set out from the intellectual condition put by 
 in which he finds himself (§ 4). And the first sophy, and 
 question he puts to himself takes this form : " I sequences. 
 imagine I know many things, but what is my 
 knowing itself ? May I not be deceived ? 
 Why may not all that I think I know be a 
 delusion } " These questions lead him to the 
 discovery of Ideology and Logic, which, as having 
 ideas for their object, are Sciences of Intuition.
 
 20 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Rosmini distinguishes between regressive pJiilosophy, 
 which, " by way of reflection, conducts the mind to find 
 the principle from which the science of being is derived ; 
 progressive philosophy, or Theosophy, which is that same 
 science of being, derived from its principle ; and mediate 
 philosophy, which furnishes the conditions, formal {Logic) 
 as well as material {Psychology), of the passage of the mind 
 from regressive philosophy {Ideology) to progressive philo- 
 sophy {Theosophy)" {Theosophy, i. § i6). Schelling made 
 the same distinction between regressive and progressive 
 philosophy. This whole subject is treated at considerable 
 length in the A^ezv Essay, vol. i. Preliminary, §§ 31-35. 
 
 The starting-point of the man who begins to philoso- 
 phize is one of four starting-points which are frequently 
 confounded, but which Rosmini distinguishes with care. 
 These are — (i) man's starting-point when he first begins 
 to develop ; (2) the starting-point of the human spirit ; 
 (3) the starting-point of the man who begins to philoso- 
 phize ; and (4) the starting-point of philosophy as science, 
 or of the system of human cognition. The first he considers 
 to be external sensation ; the second, the notion of being ; 
 the third, the point of mental growth which the man has 
 reached ; and the fourth, " that luminous point from which 
 all other cognitions derive their clearness of certainty and 
 truth, viz., the idea of being" {New Essay, vol. i. Pre- 
 liminary, § 5 ; more at length vol. iii. §§ 1468-1472). In 
 regard to the third of these starting-points, which is the 
 one that at present concerns us, he says, " When a man 
 begins to philosophize, he is already developed. . . . Now 
 he cannot set out from any other point than that at which 
 he is. To do anything else is impossible for him. Con- 
 dillac and Bonnet, in their discourses, pretend to transport 
 themselves to the first beginning of cognition and imagine 
 a statue with one sense. But in doing so, no matter 
 whether well or ill, they take an immense leap ; they seek 
 to cross an abyss in trying to forget, all at once, the 
 intellectual condition in which they are, in order to watch, 
 as spectators of another nature, the effect of the first 
 sensations which a man feels. The time for that is past 
 for them, for ever past" {New Essay, vol. iii. § 147 1).
 
 INTUITION. 21 
 
 Philosophy conducts from the certainty that things 
 seem to the certainty that they arc ; in other words, from 
 subjective persuasion to objective conviction. If being and 
 knowing were the same, as Parmenides and Hegel allege, 
 there would be no place for philosophy, inasmuch as there 
 would be no distinction between an hallucination and a true 
 cognition. It is curious that Tennyson, in the later editions 
 of In Memoriain, has altered seejns to is in the lines 
 (cxiii. 6) : 
 
 ' ' And what I am beheld again 
 What seems, and no man understands." 
 
 Sciences of Intuition. 
 
 {Ideology and Logic) 
 
 Rosmini defines intuition as " the (receptive) act of the 
 soul, whereby it receives the communication of intelligible 
 or ideal being," and adds, " This act is called intelligence 
 by Aristotle, who says that 'intelligence is of indivisibles,'* 
 calling indivisibles the essences of things which are seen 
 in ideas. Hence, in the language of the Schoolmen, 
 cognitio simplicis intelligentice means the same thing as 
 cognition of possibles. For this reason it is clear that 
 Kant .perverted the language of philosophy, when he 
 usurped the word intuition to mean sense perception. In 
 making this alteration in the meaning of the word, he 
 gave proof of the sensism which lies at the basis of his 
 system, attributing to sense the act which specially belongs 
 to intelligence " {Psychology, vol. i. § 53). Kant defines 
 intuition thus : "Through the medium of sensibility objects 
 are given to us, and it alone furnishes us with intuitions." f 
 It is against this doctrine, than which nothing can be more 
 false, that Rosmini's system is specially directed. Rosmini 
 most emphatically denies that objects are given to us 
 through the senses. Intelligence alone has an object : the 
 
 * This is not strictly correct. Aristotle merely says, '"H (jl^v ovu twu 
 aSiaiperuv vSiqcns iv tovtols Trepl & ovk iam rh \pevSos " (De An., iii. 6, l). 
 t K7-Uik der rein. Vern., Die transcend. ^Esthetik, § I.
 
 22 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 senses have only terms* When he says that " to have 
 before the mhid the essence of things, without any affirma- 
 tion on the part of the subject, is called to intuite" {Logic, 
 § 320), he agrees exactly with St. Thomas, who says, 
 " Intelligere dicit nihil aliud quam simplicein INTUITUM 
 intellectiis in id quod sibi est prcesens intelligible" {Sent., 
 dist. iii. art. 5, q. 5). 
 
 I. Ideology. 
 10. 
 Ideology Ideology undertakes to investigate the nature 
 
 and Logic. . 1 1 1 t • 
 
 01 human knowledge ; Logic, to show that the 
 nature of this knowledge is such as not to admit 
 the possibihty of error. Hence error must be 
 looked for elsewhere than in the nature of know- 
 ledge. Error is not knowledge. 
 
 Ideology forms the subject of Rosmini's earliest im- 
 portant work, the New Essay on the Origin of Ideas, as 
 well as of the voluminous treatise, The Restoration of Philo- 
 sophy in Italy, the treatise on The Idea, forming the second 
 half of the fourth volume of the Theosophy, and the po- 
 lemical work, Aristotle Explained and Examined (see 
 Bibliography). As Ideology is presupposed in every science, 
 it is frequently touched upon in every one of Rosmini's 
 works. " Ideology',' he says, " treats of being, the object 
 of the mind ; Psychology, of the soul, which is the principle 
 of human feeling. These, therefore, are the two sciences 
 which furnish the rudiments of all the others. All the 
 others, in the last analysis, resolve themselves into these 
 two " {Psychology, vol. i. § 46). 
 
 As Rosmini's chief philosophical merits lie in the 
 direction of Ideology, it will be necessary here to point 
 out what he did for that science, as well as what that 
 science, as developed by him, does for philosophy. 
 
 * See under §§ 15, 18, 74.
 
 IDEOLOGY. 23 
 
 Aristotle, in the first chapter of the first book of his 
 Psychology, calls attention, in concise terms, to a funda- 
 mental difficulty incident to all philosophical research. 
 " It is difficult," he says, " to determine whether we ought 
 first to investigate the different parts of the soul or their 
 functions, the intellective principle or intelligence, the 
 sensitive principle or sensation. And even if we begin 
 with the functions, there remains still another perplexity, 
 whether we ought not to investigate the terms of the 
 principles before the principles themselves, the intelligible 
 before the intellective principle, and the sensible before 
 the sensitive principle." * In other words, if we consider 
 merely intelligence and its conditions, it is difficult to know 
 whether philosophy ought to begin with a theory of cog- 
 nition, with logic, or with metaphysics. With whichever 
 of the three we set out, we soon find that we have pre- 
 supposed the other two. As Hegel puts it, "A beginning, 
 in so far as it is an immediate, makes an assumption, or, 
 rather, is itself an assumption." f If we begin with logic, 
 we find that we have presupposed the main truths both 
 of the theory of cognition and of metaphysics. Without 
 the former, the nature of the form of concepts would be 
 unintelligible ; without the latter, the nature of their con- 
 tent. In regard to the former, Jaesche, the editor of Kant's 
 Logic, says, " Kant never thought of trying to find a 
 ground for the logical proposition of identity and con- 
 tradiction, or of deducing the logical forms of judgments. 
 He accepted and used the principle of contradiction as a 
 proposition carrying its own evidence with it, and re- 
 quiring no deduction from a higher principle. . . . Whether, 
 however, the logical propositions of identity and contra- 
 diction, absolutely and in themselves, admit and require 
 
 * " '\aK^Tthv . . . Sioplirai . . . nSrepoj/ ra /xSpia xph C'?'''^''' "fpoTipov ^ to 
 epya avraiv, oTov rh yoe7v ^ rhu vovv, Kol rb alcrddveadat ^ t^ al(T6riTiK6v dfioius Se 
 Kal €7ri Tuv &Wcov. ei Se ra tpya •Kp6Tepov, iraMv &v ris aTroprjcretev ft ra avriKei- 
 ixeva npSTepa rovrwv ^r/T^jreof, olov rh alffOrirhv rov aicrOrjTiKov Kal rh vorirhf 
 Tov foriTiKov" (De An., i. i, 6, 7 ; 402 b, 10 sqq.). When Belger {Hermes, 
 xiii. p. 32) proposes to read in the last sentence alaOdvea-Bai for ataOtiTiKov, 
 and voe'iv for voriTiKov, he only shows that he does not understand the passage. 
 
 t Encyclopcedie, Einleitung, § i, ad fin.
 
 24 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 a deduction from a higher principle, is another question, 
 which leads to the important inquiry whether there is at 
 all any absolutely first principle of all cognition and 
 science. . . . But since, on the other hand, these highest 
 principles of knowledge, considered as principles, with 
 equal necessity presuppose the logical form, the result is 
 a circle, which cannot, indeed, be resolved for science, but 
 may be explained." * In regard to the dependence of 
 logic upon metaphysics, Trendelenburg says, " Thought, 
 with its forms, will hardly be known without an exami- 
 nation of the reciprocal action between it and the nature 
 of its objects." f If, on the other hand, we begin with a 
 theory of knowledge, we find that it involves both logic 
 and metaphysics. As F. A. Lange says, " The theory of 
 cognition is based upon logic, metaphysics, and psychology, 
 and, therefore, has no unifying principle. It will appear 
 farther on that this science is resolvable into a (Kantian) 
 purely a priori search for the postulates which cognition 
 presupposes, and the psychological theory of cognition, 
 which is of a purely empirical nature. Both branches of 
 the science presuppose an accurate investigation of the 
 logical forms." + Again, if we set out with metaphysics, 
 we plainly presuppose logic, and, therefore, also a theory 
 of cognition. Zeller is. perfectly correct when he says, 
 " Logic, as scientific methodology, must precede all in- 
 vestigation of the real ; and this is true with regard not 
 only to all those sciences which deal with particular 
 branches of the real {nature or the human spirit), but even 
 to metaphysics and the most general portion of them, 
 viz. ontology. Even ontology will never be successfully 
 treated until we come to an understanding in regard to 
 the mode of its treatment ; that is, until we know whether 
 it is to be handled in an a priori or in an a posteriori 
 manner, by reflection upon something given or by dia- 
 lectic construction." § It is thus plain that science, and 
 
 * l77im. Kant's Logik, Vorrede, pp. 7, 8, edit. Kirchmann. 
 t Logische Untersuchimgen, vol. i. p. 17. 
 X Logische Studien, p. I, note. 
 
 § Ueber Bedaitiing tind Aufgabe der Erkenntnisstheorie. Ein akadeviischer 
 Vortrag (Heidelberg, 1862), p. 8. An admirable discourse !
 
 IDEOLOGY. 25 
 
 especially philosophy, have, as regards their method, been 
 from the first involved in a vicious circle, which, at best, 
 might be explained in some mystical, ontological way, but 
 out of which it has seemed impossible to get. Wherever 
 science has begun, it has always had to assume something, 
 which had to be demonstrated by a process dependent 
 upon that assumption. Under these circumstances we 
 need hardly wonder if scepticism with regard to the 
 validity of all knowledge has appeared at many times and 
 under many forms. Science, from the days of Aristotle 
 to our own, has been moving, for the most part, in a circle 
 of correlates, not one of which contains any self-evident 
 truth, but each of which appeals for support to the others. 
 
 Rosmini's great and chief merit in philosophy was that 
 he found a way out of this vicious circle — found, by mere 
 observation, and without assuming the truth of the method 
 of that observation, a luminous point in thought, which 
 clearly shone with its own light and defied all attempts 
 not only to find, but even to seek for, an origin or ground 
 outside of 'and beyond it. This luminous point was ideal 
 being, at once the form of thought, the principle of 
 truth, and the essence of objectivity. By means of this 
 discovery he was able to lay the basis of a new science, 
 which not only takes precedence of all others, but upon 
 which all others, including logic itself, depend for their 
 truth and their principles. This is the Science of Ideology, 
 to have discovered and elaborated which is a merit not 
 inferior to that of the father of logic. If finding an irre- 
 fragable basis for all truth is the greatest of scientific 
 merits, then that merit unquestionably belongs to Rosmini. 
 
 " Ideology," says Rosmini, " is the science of the intel- 
 lective light, whereby man renders intelligible to himself 
 the sensible things from which he draws the sum total of 
 knowledge. Of course, Ideology neither creates nor invents 
 this light, which is found in the idea, or rather is the idea 
 itself; neither does it impart the intuition of it, for the 
 power to do this belongs solely to the creator and framer 
 of human nature ; but it does transport this light from the 
 order of intuition into the order of scientific reflection, and 
 thus forms the science of it.
 
 26 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 " The sciences are the product of the reflex free thought, 
 whereby man renders himself conscious of that which he 
 already knows, and renders more explicit, orderly, and 
 tractable, or applicable to action, the knowledge of which 
 he is conscious. Order not only binds together the parts 
 of each science, but even the sciences themselves. 
 
 " This order, which binds together all the sciences, ren- 
 ders conscious human knowledge not only useful but 
 beautiful, and is what constitutes the Encyclopsedia of the 
 Sciences, that is, an encyclopaedia, not in the sense of a 
 mass of material flung together at random and distributed 
 according to the letters of the alphabet, but in the sense 
 of a whole, organic, one and harmonious. 
 
 "And as soon as Ideology has made scientifically known 
 what is the natural light of the mind, the principle of such 
 an encyclopsedia is found, and, when the principle is found, 
 there is found also the encyclopaedia itself, that is, the 
 natural order of the sciences, which is virtually contained 
 in that principle and may be deduced from it. This is 
 a new ground which proves that Ideology must be placed 
 at the head of the sciences, since from it these derive their 
 principal distribution. As soon as this is done, the position 
 of every other science may be assigned. And we believe 
 that all those persons who undertake to treat any science, 
 ought first to take the trouble diligently to determine the 
 place which belongs to that science in the great body of 
 the knowable ; because, when we know what place belongs 
 to it, and what member it forms, in the great body, it 
 receives completeness and beauty, its sphere may be defined 
 and its limits assigned. And this is an indispensable con- 
 dition of systematic progress in the treatment of the 
 sciences" {Logic, Preface, §§ 1-3). 
 
 Ideology, which transports ideal being from the region 
 of intuition into that of reflection and consciousness, is the 
 science which accounts for and explains the origin of those 
 concepts which logic necessarily uses and accepts as given, 
 but which it has been wont to refer for explanation to a 
 succeeding system of metaphysics dependent upon its own 
 method of dealing with these concepts. It is, therefore,
 
 METHOD OF IDEOLOGY. 27 
 
 the true fundamental science of knowledge, and furnishes 
 the true solution of the problem so clearly stated, but so 
 poorly solved, by Aristotle.* 
 
 II. 
 
 The following is the method of Ideology. We internal 
 cannot know the nature of human knowledge tion tL 
 
 1 u ' i. ' ^ ' \J • i. 1 method of 
 
 unless we observe it as it is. rience internal ideology. 
 observation, which fixes the attention upon cogni- 
 tions and brings them clearly into view, is the 
 instrument of ideology, and the method to be 
 pursued in dealing with it. 
 
 In other words, the instrument of regressive philosophy — 
 that whereby it seeks to reach a principle of certainty — is 
 observation of the phenomena of consciousness, apart from 
 any theory respecting them, their truth or falsehood. 
 Nothing is assumed in regard to these phenomena. That 
 they are is not an assumption, but a certainty, which the 
 most determined sceptic in the world cannot rid himself of. 
 Their existence cannot even be denied' without being first 
 admitted. Of course, since the truth of the method cannot 
 be assumed, so neither can that of the result. If the result 
 is to be accepted as unconditionally true, its truth must 
 be immediately self-evident. The process of observation 
 is like that of finding one's way out of a labyrinth to the 
 light of day. My certainty that I see the light, when I 
 emerge, is in no way dependent upon the gropings and 
 wanderings by which I escaped from the darkness. Obser- 
 vation is attentive groping. It is not the beginning of 
 philosophy, properly speaking, but the starting-point of the 
 
 * Aristotle placed logic at the head of the sciences, but was obliged to 
 treat its fundamental principle, the law of identity and contradiction, in the 
 Metaphysics (iii. 3 ; 1005 b, 19). The difficulties herein involved were so 
 great that his followers had to say that logic was not a part, but an instrument, 
 of science. Hence the term organon. See Zeller, Philosophie der Griec/ien, 
 vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 182, n. 5.
 
 28 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 man who means to philosophize (see under § 9). It involves 
 no presupposition, and in this respect differs from all other 
 possible starting-points. It ends in the discovery of a 
 principle of certainty, from which philosophy may begin. 
 
 Philosophy, therefore, sets out with a certainty, and not 
 with an hypothesis, and Rosmini on several occasions com- 
 bats Hegel, who held the opposite view. Speaking of the 
 question. With what must philosophy begin } he says, 
 " Hegel felt the importance of this question, and replied 
 that whatever philosophy may begin with, that beginning 
 must always be an hypothesis, since all immediate knowing 
 is purely hypothetical.* This doctrine was suggested by 
 sensism, from which the German school could never purge 
 itself, although it assumed the title of Transcendental 
 Idealism. In fact, it recognizes as immediate nothing but 
 sense - experience, and this it calls the starting - point of 
 philosophy.t It accepts the Aristotelian dictum. Nihil est 
 in intcllectn quod prius non fncrit in scnsH,X ^nd its system 
 consists in adding that Nihil est in scnsu quod prius non 
 fuerit in intellectu. Hence it admits the two dicta as 
 reciprocally true, and sums itself up in these words : 
 'What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational.' § 
 Now, it is plain enough that, if philosophy have no other 
 point of departure than sense-experience, internal or exter- 
 nal, inasmuch as pure sense is non-cognition, and the 
 cognition of sensible things presents itself to the mind of 
 the philosopher as so many subjective cognitions, he must 
 regard these as hypotheses, as data not yet fully verified. 
 But is it true, as this philosopher asserts, that the starting- 
 point of philosophy is experience .'' This is, indeed, an 
 hypothesis of his, and it is a curious thing to see, while he 
 refuses to admit anything that is not demonstrated, and 
 
 * Hegel, Encyclop., vol. i. p. 4, § i ; p. 25, § 17. 
 
 t Ibid. §§ 1-12. 
 
 \ " Mr) aiaOavSfj.fi'os fxr/Oev, ovOhv t/.u fxdOot (6 povs) oiiSe ^vveir] " {De /In., iii. 
 8, 3 ; 432 a, 7 : cf. De Sens., 6, 445 b, 16, and Leibniz, A'oitv. Essais, ii. l). 
 Hegel is hardly right when he says that this dictum is falsely attributed to 
 Aristotle [Encylop., Einleitung, § 8). 
 
 § "Was vernlinftig ist, das ist wirklich ; und was wirklich ist, das ist 
 verniinfiig " {Philosophie des Rechts, p. 17 ; cf. Encyclop., vol. i. p. 10, § 6).
 
 METHOD OF IDEOLOGY. 29 
 
 denies philosophical value to all immediate knowledge, 
 with what confidence he sets out with this assertion, sup- 
 posing it to be an infallible truth that experience is the 
 starting-point of philosophy, and not only omitting to 
 prove it, but even neglecting to subject it to any examina- 
 tion. This habit of placing the starting-point of philosophy 
 in sense-experience is peculiar to that class of philosophers 
 who begin with the subject, that is, the soul. But Hegel, 
 by admitting that to begin with experience is to begin with 
 an hypothesis, admits, at the same time, that this is not 
 truly the beginning of philosophy, which is not an hypo- 
 thesis, but is, on the contrary, as we have said, a necessary 
 doctrine. For this reason, it is only where the necessary 
 begins that theoretic philosophy can begin. 
 
 " Moreover, when Hegel, assuming that philosophy sets 
 out from experience, lays down the universal dictum, 
 ' Whatever philosophy may begin with, that beginning must 
 always be an hypothesis,' he only takes a leap from the 
 particular to the universal, drawing one of those illogical 
 conclusions so frequent in our philosopher, who persuades 
 himself that there cannot be anything but what presents 
 itself to his imagination, and that is very little. If he had 
 reflected that external and internal sense, the sources of 
 experience, as well as the other faculties of the human 
 subject and the human subject itself, are merely viatci'ial 
 conditions, necessary, not to the existence of the truth, but 
 to making possible its communication to man (it could not 
 be communicated to a subject which did not exist or had 
 not the power of receiving the communication), he would 
 have readily understood that these material conditions can- 
 not constitute the principle of the required theory of truth, 
 albeit the search for the truth presupposes them, exactly as 
 a scaffolding, though necessary for the construction of a 
 building, is neither the principle of the building nor even 
 the smallest part of it. How afterwards experience and 
 the subject of it enter into the theory of the whole, which 
 absorbs them without being the principle of them, remains 
 to be seen from the theory itself" {Theosophy, vol. i. 
 §§ 19, 20; cf. § 53).
 
 30 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Rosmini distinguishes internal from external observation 
 thus : " Internal observation has for its matter intuition and 
 the objects intuited, the feelings, the perceptions, and all that 
 a man perceives within himself Hence internal observation 
 is the source of the initial sciences of philosophy, Ideology 
 and Psychology. External observation is the starting-point 
 of all the physical sciences. To the faithful, practical 
 application of this principle must be ascribed the won- 
 derful progress made by the physical and mechanical 
 sciences in modern times ; and it is to the neglect of 
 internal observation that is due the backward condition 
 of those sciences which rest on it. The strangest feature 
 in the case is, that these sciences were even dwarfed and 
 loaded with most superficial prejudices by those very 
 persons who with most ostentation proclaimed the method 
 of observation and experience. The reason was that they 
 prized external observation, but did not know internal ob- 
 servation. They preached and lauded observation in 
 general, at the same time ignoring that species of 
 observation which would have been most useful to them. 
 Directing their attention only to external observation, 
 which is valid only for material things, and not for 
 mind {spirito), they arrived at two unfortunate results : (i) 
 They sterilized the metaphysical sciences by rejecting 
 certain things not supplied by external experience ; (2) 
 They materialized and wasted these sciences, transferring 
 to the sphere of spiritual things what was derived from 
 external observation, and could belong only to material 
 things" {Logic, §951). 
 
 12. 
 
 Objection It wlll perhaps be objected that, until the 
 
 validity of Validity of observatioii be demonstrated, it can- 
 
 observa- , - . ~ , , . . 
 
 tion not be used as an authority. Such objection, 
 
 answered. , i r • i 
 
 however, has no lorce, inasmuch as we do not set 
 
 out by assuming observation as a means of de-
 
 HUMAN COGNITIONS. 3r 
 
 monstration, but merely accept it provisionally as 
 a means of fixino^ what is to be demonstrated 
 further on. Then the results of observation, 
 assumed at first as mere appearances, will show 
 themselves to be true and certain, carrying with 
 them a proof of their own truth, so irrefragable 
 that the contrary of them shall be impossible. 
 
 ^3- 
 
 Let us, then, carefully observe human cog- Human 
 
 . • Vpi, . . r cognitions, 
 
 nitions. These are innumerable, so that, if we though in- 
 were to consider them one by one, the task would aWe, have 
 
 ^ , ~ , __ ,,,-,a common 
 
 be mhnite. However, we are not lookmg tor that dement. 
 wherein they differ, but for that wherein they 
 coincide. Now, they all coincide in being cog- 
 nitions, and what we are trying to observe and 
 study is neither more nor less than the nature of 
 cognition itself. We must, therefore, first of all, 
 try to find out what all our cognitions have in 
 common, since this common element will be the 
 essence of cognition. 
 
 Rosmini here calls into play a faculty entirely different 
 from that of observation, viz., abstraction. It is, of course, 
 only by abstraction that we can discover a common ele- 
 ment in any class of things or thoughts. However, as the 
 validity of the whole process is not assumed, and, indeed, 
 is indifferent, the subsequent reasoning is not vitiated. 
 That we do abstract is as much a fact as that we observe, 
 whatever its meaning and conditions may be.
 
 32 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 14. 
 
 Cognition Whcii the problem is thus narrowed down, I 
 
 entitL is See that, in the case of a very large number of 
 affirmation cognitions at least, I can have them only by 
 menT.^ means of an act by which I affirm something. 
 
 For example, I know that I exist ; I know that 
 there exist other beings similar to me ; I know 
 that there exist extended bodies, having length, 
 breadth, and thickness. For the present I do not 
 ask whether my knowing deceive me or not. I 
 have what / call a knowledge of all these things, 
 and I am trying to discover how I came by it. 
 Now, I see that I should not know that there 
 exists even a single entity, if I did not say, or had 
 not sometime said, to myself that that entity 
 exists. To know, therefore, that an entity exists, 
 and to say to myself that it exists, are one and 
 the same thing. My cognition, therefore, of real 
 entities is only an internal affirmation ox jttdgment. 
 Knowing this, I have only to analyze this judg- 
 ment and observe what are its elements. In this 
 way I shall, perhaps, have advanced a step toward 
 the discovery of the nature of cognition itself. 
 
 This section contains the pith of what is distinctive in 
 Rosmini's philosophy, viz. the doctrine that in thought 
 synthesis must precede analysis, virtual judgment go 
 before actual conception or particular cognition. Most 
 previous systems of philosophy and logic had assumed the 
 order of thought to be — ( i ) Ideas, (2) Judgments, (3) Reason- 
 ing or syllogisms {z(tt Neiv Essay, vo\. i. § 227, n. i). Even 
 Kant, who admitted that " we can reduce all the acts of 
 the understanding to judgments, so that the understanding 
 
 \
 
 REAL KNOWLEDGE AN AFFIRMATION. 33 
 
 may be conceived generally as the faculty of judging," * 
 nevertheless assumed concepts as given through the 
 spontaneity of thought, and therefore as not requiring 
 explanation. "All intuitions," he says, "as sensible, are 
 based upon affections [i.e. ■Ka%r\\ ; concepts, therefore, upon 
 functions. I mean by function the unity of the act which 
 arranges diverse presentments ( Vorstdhuigcii) under a com- 
 mon one. Concepts, therefore, are based upon the spon- 
 taneity of thought, as sensible intuitions are upon the 
 receptivity of impressions."! According to this doctrine, 
 the formation of concepts is not a rational act, but a 
 spontaneous function of the thinking faculty. In other 
 words, the synthesis which is the necessary prior condition 
 of all analytical judgments, is a primitive, given fact, and 
 the only question requiring or admitting explanation is, 
 how it is that in judging we are often obliged to predicate 
 of these concepts attributes not contained in them, or, to 
 use Kant's language, how synthetic judgments a priori are 
 possible. Rosmini takes exception to this view of the 
 matter. " Kant," he says, " propounded the problem of 
 ideology in this way : How are synthetic judgments a priori 
 possible .-• that is, those judgments in which the predicate is 
 neither contained in the concept of the subject nor supplied 
 by experience. Hence the problem in question may be 
 likewise expressed thus : How is it possible that we some- 
 times attribute to a given subject a predicate neither de- 
 rived from experience nor contained in the concept of the 
 subject .'' When the question is presented in this form, it 
 seems to be assumed that, if we could find the predicate 
 either in the concept of the siibject or in experience, there 
 would remain no further difficulty to overcome. But, in 
 the first place, even if we could find the predicate in the 
 
 * " Wir konnen alle Handlungen des Verstandes auf Urtheile zuruckfiihren, 
 so dass der Verstand iiberhaupt als ein Vermogen zu urtheilen vorgestellt 
 werden kann " (Kritik der r. Verniinft. Transcend. Log., Bk. I. pt. i. § i). 
 
 t " Alle Anschauungen als sinnlich beruhen auf Affektionen, die Begriffe 
 also auf Funktionen. Ich verstehe aber unter Funktion die Einheit der liaiid- 
 lung verschiedene Vorstellungen unter einer gemeinschaftlichen zu orduen. 
 Begriffe griinden sich also auf der Spontaneitat des Denlcens, wie sinnliclie 
 Anschauungen auf der Receptivitat der Eindriicke" {Ibid.). 
 
 D
 
 34 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 concept of the subject, we should have to suppose that we 
 already had that concept. It is a pity that the difficulty 
 consists precisely in forming to ourselves the concept of 
 the subject, in thinking things as existing, in making them 
 become objects of the mind, and, in that way, the subjects of 
 our judgments. When we have once supposed the con- 
 cepts of things already formed, what difficulty can there be 
 in analyzing or connecting them in any way ? The whole 
 knot of the difficulty consists in clearly showing the man- 
 ner in which we form the concepts of things. Plainly, we 
 cannot form the concepts of things, if we do not think 
 existence in them, and this supposes that we already have 
 the idea of existence, which idea cannot come either from 
 mere sensations, because these are particular, nor from the 
 concepts of the things, since these are not yet formed. 
 
 " In the second place, the manner in which Kant pre- 
 sents the problem of ideology assumes that, whenever we 
 can find the predicate through sense-experience, there 
 remains no further difficulty. It is true, indeed, that sense- 
 experience may, in a certain fashion, supply us with a 
 predicate ; for example, when I judge a wall to be white, 
 I am induced to apply to it the predicate white from the 
 experience of the senses. Nevertheless, I must first have 
 the concept of this particular subject to which I apply the 
 predicate of whiteness, that is, I must have first thought 
 it as a thing existing. Therefore the difficulty above 
 alluded to returns : How can I think a being \ov ti\ ? in 
 other words, conceive a real as existing ? The idea of 
 existence, which I always require in order to form the 
 concept of anything, cannot be derived by abstraction 
 from the concept itself, since nothing can be derived from 
 a concept which is not yet formed. . . . The difficulty, 
 therefore, cannot consist in finding a predicate to attribute 
 to a subject whose concept is already formed, but in finding 
 the origin of the concept of the subject " {Nezv Essaj/,vo\. i. 
 §§ 353) 354)- Rosmini takes up, one after another, the 
 examples of synthetic judgments a priori offered by Kant : 
 Jirst, the arithmetical one, 7 + 5 = I2 ; second, the geo- 
 metrical one, A straight line is the shortest distance between
 
 SYNTHETIC JUDGMENTS A PRIORI, 35 
 
 two points ; third, the physical one, In all the changes of 
 the physical world the quantity of matter remains un- 
 changed ; and fourth, the metaphysical one, Every event 
 must have a cause ; * and shows, by a careful analysis, that 
 every one of them is analytic {New Essay, vol. i. §§ 346- 
 352). He then proceeds to demonstrate that our only really 
 synthetic judgments a priori are those by which concepts 
 are formed, and that these presuppose nothing innate in 
 the mind save the idea of being. In this way he shows 
 that Kant's whole scheme of subjective categories — 
 Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Modality, with their sub- 
 divisions — was invented to explain something which does 
 not exist.i* According to Rosmini, the order of thought 
 is — (i) Intuition of being, (2) Sensation, (3) Synthetic 
 judgment, resulting in (4) Concept, (5) Analytic judgment, 
 (6) Reasoning.^ 
 
 " The problem : How is the object of thought formed .'' 
 — the object which becomes the subject of subsequent 
 judgments — or, more briefly. How are concepts formed ? — 
 is the entire object of our investigation. Let us then 
 analyze it under this form. . . . 
 
 " In order that we may form a concept of a thing, we 
 require an intrinsic judgment, by means of which we con- 
 sider that thing objectively, or in itself, not as a modi- 
 fication of ourselves ; in a word, we consider it in its 
 possible existence. Now, as in every judgment (supposing 
 it already formed) there must be a subject and a predicate, 
 we must inquire, first, what is the subject and what the 
 predicate in the judgment in question ; and then, whence 
 we obtain that subject and that predicate. 
 
 " Now, in the present instance, the predicate is merely 
 existence, since to perceive a thing intellectually is merely 
 to perceive it in itself, or in the existence which it may 
 have. The subject, on the other hand, is the thing as 
 
 * See Kritik der r. Vcnmnft, Einleitung, vi. ; Pj-olegomena, Vorerinnerung, 
 § 2 (c). Rosmini's treatment of this last judgment is masterly. 
 
 t Cf. under §§ 18, 35. 
 
 X Cf. under § 43, where 2-5 are united as judgment, involving perception 
 of the real and conception.
 
 36 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L S YS TEM. 
 
 having affected our senses, that which has acted upon 
 them. . . , 
 
 " In the analysis, therefore, of the primitive judgment, 
 whereby we form the concepts of things, i.e. ideas, there are 
 found a subject (if, thus isolated, it may be so termed) given 
 merely by the senses and of which we have not yet any 
 intellectual concept, and a predicate (the idea of existence) 
 which cannot in any manner be given by the senses, and 
 of which, in consequence, no explanation can be afforded 
 by those philosophers who undertake to derive all human 
 knowledge from the senses. The problem, therefore, of 
 Ideology is : To know how that primitive judgment whereby 
 we intellectually perceive things felt \sensa\, and so form 
 concepts of them, is possible " (New Essay, vol. i. § 355). 
 
 The 
 
 notion of 
 being in 
 general is 
 a neces- 
 sary con- 
 dition of 
 the cogni- 
 tion of 
 particular 
 real 
 beings. 
 
 15- 
 
 When I say to myself that there exists any 
 particular real being or entity, I should not under- 
 stand my own meaning if I did not know what 
 entity was. Therefore the notion of bemg or entity 
 in general must be in my mind before I can 
 pronounce any of those judgments whereby I 
 affirm the existence of any particular real entity. 
 
 In this section and in the preceding one, Rosmini draws 
 that distinction which is fundamental in his philosophy — 
 the distinction between real and ideal being, or between 
 reality and ideality. These terms are explained further 
 on. At present it will suffice to say that by the real is 
 meant that which affects the senses or the sense ; in other 
 words, the felt subjective and extra-subjective.* By the 
 ideal is meant that which is purely objective, pure ob- 
 jectivity. The former is the term of feeling ; the latter, 
 the object of intelligence (cf under §§ i8, 74). The follow- 
 ing definitions, taken from the Theosophy (vol. i. § 211), 
 
 * Cf. under §§ 35, 78.
 
 REAL AND IDEAL BEING. 37 
 
 may be useful here. They are explahied at length, 
 Theosophy, §§ 213-239. 
 
 " Being [essere, esse, tlvai, Seiii] is the act of every being 
 {bee'jit ?) and every entity. 
 
 " Being \ente, ens, 6v, Seiendes] has two definitions : 
 {a) A subject having being {esse) ; 
 {b) Being {esse) with one or another of its terms. 
 
 " Entity [entita, entitas, oixria, Wesen] is any object of 
 thought, regarded by the thought as one. 
 
 ''Essence, \essenza, essentia, to ti riv elvai, Wesen/ieit] is 
 being {esse) possessed by a subject, but abstracted from 
 the subject which possesses it (cf. under § 18). 
 
 " Subject in general [stibjetto in universale, subjectinn, 
 vTroKtifXEvov, Gegenstand] is that which in a being {ens) or 
 in a group of entities is conceived as the first container 
 {priimini contbiens) and cause of unity." 
 
 The second sentence of this section expresses a cardinal 
 doctrine of Rosmini's system, which is, that, since all 
 concepts are the result of a judgment requiring a subject 
 and a predicate, and since only subjects are supplied 
 directly by the senses, therefore the first, most simple 
 predicate — that is, being, tJie pnre essence of objectivity — 
 must be present in the mind prior to the first particular 
 concept. It may be said that the whole of the New Essay 
 is devoted to the establishment and development of this 
 doctrine. In the first volume, the author, after stating the 
 purpose of the treatise and the difficulties surrounding its 
 subject, enters into a criticism of the more important pre- 
 vious systems which have attempted to explain the origin 
 of knowledge. These systems he arranges in two classes. 
 In the first he places those that err from assigning to 
 the mind too small a share in the production of concepts ; 
 in the second, those that err in the opposite direction. 
 In the first he includes the systems of Locke, Condillac, 
 Reid, and Stewart ; in the second, those of Plato, Aristotle, 
 Leibniz, and Kant. His criticisms of Stewart and Kant 
 are especially remarkable. In the second volume, after 
 showing that we have the idea of being and explaining its 
 nature, he proceeds to show that it cannot be derived either
 
 38 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 from bodily sensations, from the feeling of individual ex- 
 istence, from reflection in Locke's sense, or from the act 
 of perception, and concludes that it must therefore be 
 innate. The remainder of the volume is devoted to show- 
 ing how, through this one innate formal idea and the 
 material derived from sensation, all other ideas may be 
 formed and explained (§ 471). The third volume treats 
 of the criterion of certainty and its application to human 
 cognitions and reasonings. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton {Lectures on Metaphysics and 
 Logic, vol. ii. p. 366 sq.) says, " I pronounce Existence to 
 be a NATIVE COGNITION, because I find that I cannot 
 think except under the condition of thinking all that I 
 am conscious of to exist. Existence is thus a form, a 
 category of thought." This, so far as it goes, is precisely 
 the doctrine of Rosmini, who, however, goes farther and 
 asserts that existence or being is the only form native to 
 the mind, the only idea that can be thought by itself, and 
 the only one necessary in order to explain the origin of 
 all others {New Essay, §§ 410-412). That we cannot think 
 without the idea of being, that being is contained in every 
 other idea and category, is a self-evident fact. The idea of 
 being, which forms the universal condition of thought, 
 Rosmini finds to be objective, merely possib/e or ideal, simple, 
 one, identical, universal, necessary, immiitable, eternal, and 
 indeterminate— 2X'ir\)avA.e^ not one of which belongs to sen- 
 sation. It cannot, therefore, be derived from sensation. 
 Similar reasoning shows that it cannot be derived from 
 any other external source open to man. Indeed, if man 
 were placed in front of all the possible sources of know- 
 ledge, he could not draw from any of them without first 
 having the idea of being, since without it he could not 
 make anything an object, and therefore could not know 
 anything. It follows from all this that the idea of being is 
 innate. 
 
 Rosmini quotes a very striking passage from St. 
 Bonaventura, to show that that philosopher held the same 
 doctrine: "Mira igitur est caecitas intellectus, qui non 
 considerat illud quod prius videt, et sine quo nihil potest
 
 IDEAL BEING INNATE. 39 
 
 cognoscere. Sed sicut oculus intentus in varlas colorum 
 differentias, lumen per quod videt caetera, non videt, et si 
 videt, non tamen advertit ; sic oculus mentis nostrse in- 
 tentus in ista entia particularia et universalia, IPSUM ESSE 
 EXTRA OMNE GENUS, licet primo occurrat menti, et per 
 ipsum alia, tamen non advertit {Itiner. Mentis in Denni. 
 cap. V.) " {New Essay, § 472, n. 2). The difference between 
 Rosmini's view, however, and that of St. Bonaventura is 
 very great, inasmuch as the latter does not conceive being 
 to be an innate idea, or, indeed, an idea at all. Many 
 philosophers, besides and before St. Bonaventura, held that 
 the first thing known or revealed to the mind was universal 
 being, or tJie universal, which is the same thing. Aristotle, 
 for example, repeatedly says that the first in reason is the 
 universal, whereas the first in sensation is the individual 
 (koto \x\v yap tov Xoyov ra KaOoXov irporepa, Kara ^l riiv 
 aicrOiiaiv ra Kaff tKacrra {Metaph., iv. 1 1 : IO18 b, 32. ; cf. Phys., 
 i. 5 : 189 a, 5). And the same thing is asserted, though 
 indirectly, still more strongly, in Metaph., iii. 3 : 1005 b, 
 19 sq., in the principle of contradiction, which Aristotle 
 regards as the most certain of all principles. Rosmini 
 himself also quotes from St. Thomas the assertion that 
 " the object of the intellect is common being or truth," * 
 and he might easily have found even a stronger statement 
 of the same doctrine in that philosopher's commentary on 
 the passage from Aristotle's Metaphysics last referred to. 
 " Cum duplex sit operatio intellectus : una, qua cognoscit 
 quid est, quae vocatur indivisibilium intelligentia : alia, qua 
 componit et dividit : in utroque est aliquod primum : in 
 prima quidcm opcratione est aliquod primum quod cadit 
 in conceptione intellectus, scilicet hoc quod dico ens ; nee 
 aliquid hac operatione potest mente concipi, nisi intelligatur 
 ens. . . . Hoc principium, impossibile est esse et non esse 
 simul, dependet ex intellectu entis " {Comment, in Meta- 
 phys., lib. iv. [iii.], sect. vi.). It is plain that, according to St. 
 Thomas, the intuition of being is innate. A large number 
 of passages of like import will be found collected in 
 
 * " Objcctum intellectus est ens vel ver74m coinnwne^^ (Sum. T/ieoL, i. q. 
 55, art. I, concl. ).
 
 40 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Casara's little work, La Luce deW Occhio Corporeo e qiiclla 
 dell' Intelletto, pp. 17 sq. 
 
 Being in 
 
 general is 
 known by 
 intuition. 
 
 Two great 
 classes, of 
 human 
 cognitions. 
 
 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 affirma- 
 tion and those arisinsf from intuition. 
 
 " Being alone is cognizable per se, and constitutes cog- 
 nizability 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 mani- 
 fest 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 them- 
 selves — indeed, that they begin to be understood only when 
 we regard them in relation to being, that is, as terms of 
 being itself" {^Neiv Essay, vol. iii. § 1224). The affirma- 
 tion alluded to is the affirmation of being, which Rosmini 
 distinguishes from the appreJiension of the being affirmed 
 
 * " Unumquodque cognoscibile est in quantum est ens " (St. Thomas, Com- 
 ment, in Aristot. Physica, i. i).
 
 INTUITION AND AFFIRMATION. 41 
 
 {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 order of these two classes of cognitions Order of 
 is directly manifest from what has been said, classes. 
 Ajffirmative 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 applica- 
 tion 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 nniversali- 
 tatis. 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 \s not properly the quality thought, 
 but is a mode which it assumes in the mind. This dis- 
 tinction must be carefully marked. 
 
 " Now, how does it happen that the quality thought is
 
 42 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 in me universal ? When my mind {spirito) has perceived 
 any quaHty, it has the power of repeating this quahty 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 prin- 
 ciples, viz., fii'st, 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 in- 
 definitely, 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 es- 
 sentially 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 " [Nezv Essay, vol. i. 
 § 197, n. i). 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 maji does, which 
 marks all men with humanity, it is a common name. If, 
 on the other hand, it names them without marking them
 
 UNIVERSALITY. 43 
 
 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 Meta- 
 physics and Logic, vol. ii. pp. 319 sqq. ; and Max Muller, 
 Lectiires 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 imiversal 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 equi- 
 lateral triangles are equiangular," I am putting what ex- 
 presses 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, eqnilater'al triangle expressing a singular idea. 
 The Greek form of expression is much superior to the 
 English : n^ taoTrXfUjOO) rpiywi'dj v7raf)\H to laroyioviov ] 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
 
 44 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 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, in- 
 correct 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 equi- 
 angular ones ; but it is plainly absurd, using the Aristo- 
 telian every {irag) instead of all, to say, Every equilateral 
 triangle is every equiangular one. If the doubly quantified 
 proposition means anything more than the entirely un- 
 quantified 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 equi- 
 angular ; in other words, that the equilateral triangle is 
 equiangular (see Jevons, Elementary Lessons in Logic, 
 pp. 184 sq.). 
 
 Being in 
 general 
 and par- 
 ticular 
 being. 
 
 By intui- 
 tion we 
 know the 
 essence of 
 being. 
 
 18. 
 
 Let us now examine the difference between/^r- 
 tiailai^ 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 under- 
 stand what being is," expressed in philosophical 
 language, means, to understand \}iV^ 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
 
 BEING HAS TWO MODES. 45 
 
 or universal being, Rosmini says, " Being in universal is 
 idea''* {New Essay, vol, ii. § 534). "Besides that form of 
 being which is possessed by subsisting things, and which 
 we have called real, there is another, entirely distinct, which 
 we have called ideal, and which forms the basis of the 
 possibility of these things. Yes, ideal being is an entity of 
 a nature entirely peculiar, such that it cannot be confounded 
 either with our minds, or with bodies, or with anything 
 else belonging to real being. It would be a grave error to 
 conclude from this that ideal being, or the idea, is nothing, 
 on the ground that it does not belong to that kind of 
 things that enter into our feelings. On the contrary, ideal 
 being, the idea, is a most true and noble entity, and we 
 have seen with what sublime characteristics it is endowed. 
 It cannot, indeed, be defined ; but it may be analyzed and 
 its effect upon us stated, viz., that it is the light of the 
 mind. What can be clearer than light ? When this light 
 is extinguished, there remains only darkness. Finally, from 
 what has been said we may form a conception of the mode 
 in which the idea of being adheres to the mind : it may be 
 known without any assent or dissent on our part. It is 
 present to us as a pure fact. The reason is this. Such an 
 idea does not affirm and does not deny ; it merely con- 
 stitutes in us the possibility both of affirming and denying " 
 {New Essay, vol. ii. §§ 555-557). "Even if the reality and 
 ideality of things were identical, which is not the case . . . 
 still things would never confound themselves with the 
 act of the mind, nor with the subject which possesses 
 them, because idea, as such, is object, distinct from the 
 thinking subject and opposed to it" {Ibid., vol. iii. § 1192). 
 " Every one who attends to what takes place within himself 
 may observe the difference existing between a thing which () 
 he thinks diS possible and a real thing. It is easy to observe, 
 and there is no one in the world who does not observe, 
 that a thing or a being s\va\Ay possible does not act on our 
 senses. For example, a possible food does not satisfy our 
 
 * According to Rosmini, " The word idea expresses a mode of being, that 
 is, indicates being in so far as it is intelligible" {Psychology, vol. i. § 18, note ; 
 cf. Restoration of Philosophy, Book iii. cpp. 39-51).
 
 46 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 hunger, however long we think of it, even if we contemplate 
 it for entire days, and the poor philosopher would die of 
 hunger, if he had no other nutriment than this object of 
 his mind. In order, therefore, that a real action may be 
 exerted upon us, there must be a real being, because 
 nothing acts really but that which is really. Nevertheless 
 no one calls that which is not real, but merely possible, 
 nothing; nor can it be so called ; for, if it were nothing, it 
 could not call into exercise, as it does, the activity of our 
 minds. This obvious observation, which everybody makes 
 continually, and according to which everybody speaks and 
 acts, leads us to the evident conclusion that being, taken in 
 the widest sense, has two modes, the ideal and the real; 
 that is, that being manifests and communicates itself to us 
 in two ways, by that of the mind and that of the sense. 
 Nor must we suppose it possible to reduce these two 
 modes, in which being acts upon us and reveals itself to 
 us, to one. The qualities of ideal being are different from, 
 and opposed to, those of }'eal being, and the sense, which 
 perceives the latter, does not reach or attain to a knowledge 
 of anything that the mind, which perceives the latter, 
 sees. In fact, the sense does not perceive anything that 
 is merely possible, but only that which is real, and the 
 mind, as the faculty of knowing, perceives nothing of the 
 real, but only the possible. In the faculty of knowing 
 there are only ideas ; things do not enter it" {La Sapienza, 
 
 ii- 7, PP- 399 sqq.)- 
 
 Rosmini criticizes Aristotle and the German school, 
 from Kant to Hegel, for neglecting this obvious distinction 
 between ideal and real being, or, which in his language is 
 the same thing, between object and subject. Aristotle 
 certainly is guilty of this neglect, or rather of a deliberate 
 confusion and identification of these necessarily distinct 
 elements of cognition. He tells us that " intellect and the 
 intelligible are the same thing," * and that " the intellect is 
 potentially, in a certain sense (jnog), the intelligibles." f 
 Rosmini is very severe upon the word ttwc (" in a certain 
 
 * " Tavrhv vovs koX voriT6v " {Mctaph., xi. 7, 1072 b, 20 ; cf. Bonitz' note), 
 f " Auf'tiyuet ircoj iari rh. vo-qto. 6 vovs " {De An., iii. 4, 11 : 429 b, 30).
 
 BEING HAS TWO MODES. 47 
 
 sense "). " In respect to Aristotle," he says, " it is to be 
 observed that ... he continually interlards his discourse 
 with exceptive and diminutive particles, which he no- 
 where explains, and which, nevertheless, furnish him with a 
 convenient excuse for accepting a proposition when it suits 
 him, and rejecting it for its contrary when the case is 
 otherwise. Thus, when he says that ' the mind is poten- 
 tially, in a certain mode {wmq), the intelligibles,' the whole 
 knot of the question lies in the particle Trwe, a particle of 
 such very small bulk that it escapes the reader's attention, 
 as if it were nothing, whereas it is the very point of the 
 whole system, if system there be, and if there be not, is 
 that which makes us believe there is. Now, this particle is 
 just the one most neglected by our philosopher. He leaves 
 the interpretation of it to the reader, and, supposing it 
 perspicuous in itself, gives no explanation of it Never- 
 theless, from this proposition, conditioned and limited by 
 7ru)g ' in a certain mode,' he draws an absolute conclusion, 
 namely, that the mind can think of the intelligibles when it 
 chooses, which presupposes that the intelligibles are in the 
 mind, not merely in a certain mode, but absolutely ; other- 
 wise the consequence, keeping within the limits of the 
 premises, ought to be, that the mind can think of the intel- 
 ligibles when it chooses, in a certain mode. When, however, 
 the proposition does not suit him, he takes its contrary, 
 and affirms that the intelligibles are in a certain mode 
 outside the mind. And there he is at once among real 
 things, in defiance of his previous supposition " (^r/j-/^//<? 
 Explained, § 94). The work from which this passage is 
 taken is, for the most part, devoted to showing the errors 
 into which Aristotle fell, from not distinguishing between 
 ideal and real being. Rosmini, had he not been specially 
 lenient to St. Thomas, might easily have shown that that 
 philosopher sometimes falls into the same fundamental mis- 
 take as Aristotle, accepting unreservedly the doctrine that 
 " In his qu<2 sunt sine materia, idem est intellectns et quod 
 intelligittiv" * {Sum. TheoL, i. q. 55, art. i, 2, con.); in other 
 
 " 'EirJ/tei' yap rioy avfv vArjs, rb avrS icrri voovv Koix voovfjuvov " (Dd An, 
 iii. 4, 12 : 430 a, sq).
 
 48 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 words, confounding the subject with the object of thought. 
 St. Thomas, indeed, is careful to say that " Non oportet quod 
 efficiantur iiniim secundum esse simpliciter, sed solum quod 
 fiant unum quantum pertinet ad actum intelligeiidi' {Supp. 
 Qu., xcii. I, 8.) This, however, only makes matters worse ; 
 for it is precisely in the act of intelligence that subject and 
 object are not one. Indeed, while there is no reason for 
 believing that subject and object are not one really, Kara 
 /xiyeBog, as Aristotle would say, it is perfectly plain that, 
 unless they are distinct ideally, kcito. tSv \6jov,* there can 
 be neither thought nor cognition. However, it must be 
 admitted that neither Aristotle nor St. Thomas had a 
 consistent theory of cognition. 
 
 Speaking of Kant, Rosmini says, " The fundamental 
 error of criticism lies in this, that it makes the objects of 
 thought subjective. These objects result from sensations 
 (matter) and intellectual forms. The sensations are modi- 
 fications of our own feeling, and, according to Kant, are 
 not sufficient to justify us in believing in the existence of 
 an external cause that produces them, because, in order to 
 draw this conclusion, we should have to admit the validity 
 of the principle of cause. But the principle of cause, and 
 all the other forms that do not come from the sensations, 
 emanate from our minds {spirito), and they emanate from 
 these, says Kant, precisely because they do not come from 
 sensations. Kant therefore finds no alternative for the 
 source of a cognition, or of an element of cognition, other 
 than sensation or our own minds. But such an argument 
 per exclusioncui is manifestly arbitrary and false, because 
 the enumeration of possible cases is incomplete. Such 
 is the fundamental error of this school, and the original sin 
 of all the German philosophies which have appeared since 
 Kant, all having gone astray in the same way. The sup- 
 position upon which Kant rears his system, but of which 
 he does not furnish the slightest proof — the supposition, I 
 mean, that whatever there is in our intelligence that does 
 
 * See De Animd, iii. 4, i ; 429 a, 13. Cf. Ibid., 9, i; 432 a, 20 : and lo, 8 ; 
 433 b, 24 sqq. Also Trendelenburg's note, Arislotelis De Animd, Lib. III. , 
 p. 527 sq.
 
 HEGELIAN LOGIC. 49 
 
 not belong to sensation must of necessity come from the 
 intelligent subject — had its origin 'in his failing to observe 
 that being has two modes, the one subjective, the other 
 objective, and that being is identical in the two. Being, in 
 its objective mode, is being which makes itself known, and 
 makes itself known as it is, even as subjective. Inasmuch 
 as the being is identical, the cognition is valid and true " 
 (^New Essay, vol. i..§ 331). 
 
 Rosmini calls those philosophers who. identify ideal with 
 real being Unitarians, in contradistinction to those who do 
 not see the need of ideal being at all, and whose system he 
 calls the absolute anoetic. Among the chief of the former 
 he includes Hegel. " Among the absolute unitarian and 
 dianoetic systems, that which in our times has made most 
 noise is the system of Hegel. According to this great- 
 grandson of Kant, the concept is the form of things, and 
 this free and infinite form itself constitutes universal matter 
 (all diversity of matter is declared by Hegel an illusion).* 
 How a speculative mind can fall so easily into this error, 
 which to common sense seems incredible, has been 
 explained above. . . ." After clearly setting forth the nature 
 and fecundity of ideal being, as distinguished from real 
 being, Rosmini proceeds : " This immense virtuality of 
 indeterminate or initial being, if not considered with the 
 greatest care, may easily impose upon the mind. The 
 philosopher who discovers its fecundity may rashly con- 
 clude that eveiything, even reality, issues from the idea, 
 like water from a spring, and that the concept, as Hegel 
 put it, is the form from which matter issues. But the 
 illusion of these philosophers arises from their not having 
 sufficiently considered that, although the cognition of real 
 things consists in apprehending these as terms of that being 
 which was previously intuited without it, nevertheless, such 
 cognition cannot take place, if such terms are not given to 
 us, and that, whatever effort a man may make with his 
 
 * "Die tiefere Anschauung ist dagegcn diese . . . einerseits, dass der 
 Materie als solcher keine Sclbststandigkeit zukommt, und andererseits dass die 
 Form nicht von aussen an die Materie gclangt, sondern als Totalitat, das Prin- 
 zip der Materie in sich selbst triigt, welche freie und unendliclic Form sich uns 
 demnachst als der Begrift" ergeben wird " {Eiicydopccdie, § 128, Zusatz). 
 
 E
 
 50 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 mind, he can never succeed in bringing anything real out 
 of the bowels of the idea. The latter remains for ever 
 barren, if being be not presented under the other, that 
 is, the real form. Hence the two forms must be admitted 
 as for ever coexistent, the one irreducible to the other, and 
 such that the one can never render itself productive of the 
 other. Not only is this true, but even when man, having 
 the feeling of the real, knows it — that is, has it as the term 
 of intuited being — and when the same intuited being is 
 applied to the feeling, the two forms remain completely 
 distinct and unconfused, so that no person of sane mind 
 will ever say that the idea of the felt is the felt, or that the 
 felt is merely an idea. Even if he did say so, he would be 
 refuted by language itself, in which the two things stand 
 altogether distinct. 
 
 " Hegel here falls into an antinomy, takes it for a true 
 contradiction, and not being able to extricate himself from 
 it, makes peace with it and declares it to be the foundation 
 of philosophy. The antinomy is this. On the one hand, 
 he sees that pure being, as a universal first act, is empty, 
 having no content of any kind. He hastily concludes that 
 pure being and nothing are exactly the same, and thus 
 introduces into philosophy the avidyd of the Buddhistic 
 systems.* On the other hand, he sees the infinite virtuality 
 of pure being— of this nothing of his — which is also pure 
 form, and therefore he brings forward various arguments 
 to show that even the reality of things issues from the form 
 of thought. Of course, if we carefully follow the steps by 
 which Hegel proceeds in this argument, we shall find him 
 continually tripping. Indeed, he sometimes, as in the 
 Introduction to the Science of Logic, tries to show that, if 
 reality is not made to come from the womb of the idea, it 
 falls asunder into absurdities ; at other times, as in the 
 Encyclopcedia, he tries to depict before the eyes of his 
 readers the manner in which this external reality issues 
 from the idea itself, calling them to witness the marvellous 
 birth. Everywhere his reasoning is based upon equivoca- 
 tion and the most vulgar prejudices. 
 
 * See Max Miillev, Chips frotn a German Workshop, vol. i. p. 248, Ameri- 
 can edit.
 
 HEGELIAN LOGIC. 51 
 
 " In the Introduction alluded to, he remarks that ' it is 
 foolish to say that Logic prescinds from all content, that it 
 teaches only the rules of thinking, without paying any heed 
 to what is thought. . . . For since thinking and the rules 
 of thinking must be its subject, it has at once in these its 
 particular content.' * But, with Hegel's permission, no one 
 has ever denied that the rules of thinking are the subject 
 of Logic, and therefore no one has ever asserted that Logic 
 has not its own proper content. The equivocation here is 
 between Logic and pure being. Logic has certainly a con- 
 tent, and this content is formed of pure being, ideas, and 
 the ideal principles which it teaches how to handle. But 
 we assert that this being, these ideas, and these principles 
 remain indeterminate, and, in this sense, they are devoid 
 of content, because they do not contain the ultimate deter- 
 minations, much less reality. Hegel, therefore, makes a 
 puerile criticism upon the logicians who preceded him, a 
 criticism due solely to his own misunderstanding. Even if 
 his criticism were just, it would not follow that the form 
 of thought, of itself, produced the matter. But let us listen 
 to a somewhat more serious argument. ' It is supposed,' 
 he says, 'that the matter of cognition exists outside of 
 thought as a distinct, full-fledged world ; that thought, in 
 itself empty, adds itself externally, as form, to this matter, 
 fills itself therewith, and only then obtains a content and 
 so becomes a real cognition. According to this assumption, 
 these two elements . . . stand to each other in this order. 
 The object is something in itself finished and complete, 
 which, as far as its reality is concerned, can entirely dis- 
 pense with thought, whereas thought is something imper- 
 fect, requiring to complete itself by means of a material, 
 and must even, as a soft, undetermined form, adapt itself to 
 its matter. Truth is the agreement of thought with its 
 object, and in order to bring about this agreement (which 
 
 * " Vors Erste aber ist es ungescliickt zu sagcn, class die Logik von allem 
 Inhalt abstrahire, class sie nur die Regeln des Uenkens lehre, ohne auf das 
 Gedachte sich einzulassen. . . . Denn da das Denken und die Regeln des 
 Denkens ihr Gegenstand seyn sollen, so hat sie ja daran ihren eigenthiimlichen 
 Inhalt " (Einleitnng, p. 27, edit. 1833).
 
 52 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 does not exist essentially), thought must adapt and suit 
 itself to its object.' * 
 
 "These words contain a criticism, in part just, of the 
 absolute anoetic system ; but they contain, besides, many 
 maccuracies, and not the least force to injure the true 
 system proposed by us. This will be clear from the 
 following considerations : — 
 
 " (i) First of all, the argument is based upon an abuse 
 of the word object. We have observed that reality has not 
 the nature of object, and that objectivity belongs exclu- 
 sively to intelligible being, and hence to the idea ; so that 
 the real, which is not object, becomes object through that 
 act of being, which is seen in the idea whose term it is. 
 Hence we do not admit that truth * consists in the agree- 
 ment of thought with its object,' for the simple reason that 
 there is no thought without an object, and that thought can 
 never do otherwise than agree with its object, since between 
 thought and object there is an essential synthesis. 
 
 " (2) Much less is it true that, in our system, in order to 
 bring about an agreement between thought and its object, 
 thought must accommodate itself to its object, because 
 this happens always, and must happen always, if we mean 
 by object what the word signifies, viz., that which stands 
 opposite to the act of thinking, that which is present to 
 the understanding. 
 
 " (3) The truth, therefore, as held by us, by Aristotle, 
 and by the ancients generally, is not what Hegel supposes 
 it to be, or what he founds his vain censure of the old 
 logic upon. Man always possesses the truth, when, with 
 
 * "Es wirderstens vorausgestzt, dass der Stoff des Erkennens, als eine fer- 
 tige Welt ausserhalb des Denkens, an und fiir sich vorhanden, dass das Den- 
 ken fiir sich leer sey, als eine Form ausserlich, zu jener Materie hinzutrete, 
 sich damit erfiille, erst daran einen Inhalt gewinne, und dadurch ein reales 
 Erkennen werde. Alsdann stehen diese beiden Bestandtheile ... in dieser 
 Rangordnung gegen einander, dass das Object ein fiir sich VoUendetes, Fertiges 
 sey, das des Uenkens zu seiner Wirklichkeit vollkommen entbehren konne, 
 dahingegen das Denken etwas Mangelhaftes sey, das sich erst an einem Stoffe 
 zu vervollstandigen, und zwar als eine weiche unbestimmte Form sich seiner 
 Materie angemessen zu machen habe. Wahrheit ist die Uebereinstimmung 
 des Denkens mit dem Gegenstande, und es soil, um diese Uebereinstimmung 
 hervorzubringen — denn sie ist nicht an und fiir sich vorhanden — das Denken 
 nach dem Gegenstande sich fiigen und bequemen " (Einleitung, p. 28).
 
 HEGELIAN LOGIC. 53 
 
 his inner judgment, he affirms what is true, not only think- 
 ing the object, but recognizing what he naturally thinks. 
 Hence there is a true affirmation and a true negation, and 
 these relate to the form as much as to the matter of thought, 
 so that the question regarding the form and matter of 
 thought and their relation to each other has nothing to do 
 with the question whether man does or does not possess 
 the truth. It was modern philosophers, and especially 
 Germans, that confounded these two utterly distinct 
 questions, 
 
 " (4) It is, therefore, false to say that we must unite the 
 matter to the form of thought, in order to possess the truth, 
 or, as Hegel puts it, in order that thought may become a 
 real cognition. By the addition of matter to form, the 
 quantity of human knowledge is certainly increased, but its 
 qjiality is not thereby changed so that, from being false, it 
 becomes true. Knowledge may be more or less great, more 
 or less materiated ; but this has nothing whatever to do with 
 its truth. The question, therefore, regarding the truth of 
 knowledge does not depend upon the matter of knowledge, 
 but upon pronouncing true judgment with respect both to 
 the form and the matter of knowledge. 
 
 " (5) To call the form united to the matter real cogni- 
 tion is an abuse of terms. Every human cognition is real, 
 even that which is merely formal ; for, although the object 
 of cognition may be a pure idea, still the act of thought 
 which terminates in it is real, as much as the intelligent 
 subject that performs it. 
 
 " In all the passage quoted from Hegel, therefore, there 
 is only this much of truth, that the absolute anoetics are 
 wrong in considering the matter of thought, the reality, 
 as a world that stands by itself, utterly apart from, and 
 independent of, thought. . , . But this error was not well 
 observed by Hegel, who, in observing it, fell into the 
 opposite one. In fact, although we may prove that the 
 real world cannot exist without a mind, the consequence 
 drawn from this fact by Hcgcl docs not follow, viz., that 
 there is an absolute interdependence between external 
 reality and the human mind. This interdependence cer-
 
 54 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 tainly exists, if we speak of the world in so far as it is 
 actually known by man ; but man, when he thinks the 
 world, thinks it as existing absolutely, and therefore as 
 independent of the thought of him who thinks it. At the 
 same time, through a higher reflection, he sees that this 
 world cannot exist really without being thought by some 
 mind, for the reason that the act of being upon which it 
 depends is eternal, essentially intelligible, and therefore 
 from all eternity the object of an intelligence.* 
 
 " Let us now give a sample of the other way in which 
 Hegel tries to inculcate his system. 
 
 " He sets out with a sensistic prejudice. Indeed, at the 
 bottom of all those philosophies, which seem so specula- 
 tive, there always lurks sensism, or even materialism, as we 
 shall see. ' We have,' he says, ' . . . already alluded to 
 the ancient belief, according to which the real in objects 
 . , . does not present itself immediately in conscious- 
 ness, . . . but must be reflected upon, in order to give the 
 real nature of the object' f ' By reflection something is 
 changed in the way in which the content originally is in 
 feeling, intuition, and perception. It is, therefore, only by 
 means of a change that the true nature of the object comes 
 into consciousness.' % ' Inasmuch as the real nature of 
 things becomes apparent only in reflection, and this reflec- 
 tion is my activity, it follows that this nature is the product 
 of my spirit as a thinking subject, of me according to my 
 simple universality, as the absolutely self-present Ego — or 
 of my freedom.' § 
 
 * See an excellent article, entitled Mr. Spetuer on the lAdependence of 
 Matter, by Prof. T. H. Green, in the Conteinporary Review for March, 1878. 
 
 t " Es ist . . . der alte Glaube angefiihrt werden, dass was das Wahrhafte 
 an Gegensfanden . . . sich nicht nnmittelbar im Bewuistsein einfinde . . . 
 sondern dass man erst darliber nachdenken miisse, um zur vvahrhaften Beschaf- 
 fenheit des Gegenstandes zu gelangen " (Encyclopadie, § 21). 
 
 J " Durch das Nachdenken wird an der Art wie der Inhalt zunachst in der 
 Empfindung, Anschauung, Vorstellung ist, etwas verandert ; es ist somit 
 nur vermittelst einer Veranderung, dass die wahre Natur des Gegenstandes 
 ziim Bewusstsein kommt " {Ibid., § 22). 
 
 § " Indem im Nachdenken ebensosehr die wahrhafte Natur zum Vorschein 
 kommt als diess Denken meiue Thatigkeit ist, so ist jene ebensosehr das 
 Erzet(g)tiss meines Geistes und zwar als denkenden Subjekts, Meiner nach 
 meiner einfachen Allgemeinheit, als des schlechthin bei sich seyenden Ichs oder 
 meiner Freiheit" {Ibid., § 23).
 
 HEGELIAN LOGIC. 55 
 
 " This is the way in which Hegel pretends to demon- 
 strate that the matter and reahty of things issue from the 
 forms of things or from ideas. We beheve every man who 
 understands what an important matter and what a paradox 
 are involved in this thesis, will demand, before accepting it, 
 a demonstration a little less flimsy, and, I would almost 
 say, a little less slippery than this. If we analyze it, we 
 shall see that it is vitiated in a hundred places. 
 
 "(i) It has for its foundation sensism, a sensism re- 
 ceived as a prejudice, accepted as true without even the 
 semblance of proof. Indeed, Hegel lays it down as some- 
 thing beyond question, that the object is given in sensation 
 and in perception ; that is, in sense-perception, as is shown 
 by the context. Such, indeed, is the prejudice of sensism. 
 ... If it be admitted that sense gives us the object, then 
 feeling is transformed into thinking ; for this is the essential 
 difference between feeling and thinking, that the former has 
 not an object, but only a term, whereas the latter has an 
 object : sensation is a modification, a mode of being of the 
 sentient subject ; the idea is an object entirely different 
 from the thinking subject, never a modification, never a 
 mode of its being. 
 
 " (2) Hence Hegel wrongly gives the name of 7'cjlcction 
 to what is only intellective perception, whereby real being 
 is apprehended as the term of initial or ideal being. This 
 perception, which presents real things to thought, is an 
 immediate operation, for the simple reason that sense 
 has no prior object, and merely adds an element to the 
 object of perception. Reflection, on the contrary, is 
 mediate, because it supposes the object as already given, 
 and does not itself construct that object. From this error 
 Hegel falls into another, which is even an absurdity. It 
 is this : Nothing immediate can be true, and all truth is 
 mediated. 
 
 " (3) Hence, in the same way, it is altogether false, with 
 a vulgar and sensistic falseness, to say that reflection 
 produces a modification in the object previously given 
 in sensation. It is doubly false : First, because, since, as 
 we said above, the object is not given in sensation (the
 
 56 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 object is merely ideal, being intuited by the mind, and 
 therefore does not enter into sensation), reflection cannot 
 modify it. The truth, on the contrary, is that there is 
 intellective perception, which does not indeed modify it, 
 but constitutes it for man, perception being that act of the 
 intelligence whereby real things are immediately known, 
 as we have already seen. Second, because neither perception 
 nor reflection modifies or changes objects in any way. . . . 
 
 " (4) Even supposing that Hegelian reflection did 
 modify objects, it is a purely gratuitous inference that he 
 draws therefrom, when he says, ' By reflection something 
 is changed in the way in which the content originally is in 
 feeling. ... It is, therefore, only by means of a change that 
 the true nature of the object comes into consciousness.' 
 If the object is already in sensation, and is afterwards 
 modified in reflection, how does our philosopher know that 
 the true nature of the object results from this modification 
 and is not already given in sensation } What proof does 
 he adduce .? How does he justify this predilection for 
 reflection } He offers us no intrinsic reason. But this man, 
 who in everything else sets such small store by common 
 sense and the ancient philosophers, and who boasts him- 
 self content with few judges, is, nevertheless, here con- 
 tent to have recourse to the authority of common sense 
 and of the ancient logicians — interpreted, to be sure, in his 
 own fashion. He assures us that it is admitted by common 
 sense that, in order to know the true nature of things, 
 we must elaborate the data and transform them by 
 thought ; that ancient philosophy recognized the agree- 
 ment between ideas and things, and concluded that things 
 are in themselves as they are conceived in thought. 
 Hence, concludes our philosopher, thought is the truth of 
 things, objective truth. That common sense, together with 
 ancient philosophy, admits the agreement between ideas 
 and things, is most true ; but it does not, in the smallest 
 degree, follow that thought produces things. If, instead 
 of the equivocal, or, more correctly, subjective word thought, 
 we put idea (and Hegel himself uses the two promiscuously, 
 thereby rendering his whole reasoning confused), we too
 
 HEGELIAN LOGIC. 57 
 
 shall be willing to admit that the idea is the objective truth 
 of things. But this does not mean that the subjective 
 thought of man produces objective truth, that is, the idea. 
 On the contrary, the idea is itself giv^en to the human 
 subject to contemplate as an object, and hence it cannot 
 be a production of thought, which does not exist without 
 it or before it, that is, does not exist without its natural 
 object. Hence the object, which is ideal being, is united 
 to real things as a principle to its terms, and these are not 
 without that principle ; but terminated being, that is, being 
 with its terms, is before human thought and independent 
 of it, and is not by any means, as Hegel holds, a produc- 
 tion of it. It is thus that we must interpret common 
 sense and ancient philosophy, and not make them talk 
 vagaries, as Hegel always does. As to pretending that 
 common sense admits that, ' in order to know the true 
 nature of things, thought must elaborate and transform 
 their data,' this is equivocal talk, which may be true, but 
 not in the sense in which Hegel means it. The phrase 
 ' to know the true nature of things ' either means the same 
 thing as ' to know the nature of things,' and then the word 
 tj'iie is superfluous, or else it means ' to know the inner 
 nature of things more profoundly,' and then the word trne 
 is, to say the least, equivocal, because we may know little 
 or much of a thing, and, in either case, the knowledge may 
 be true ; for surely the nature of a thing may be known in 
 different degrees, more or less implicitly, and yet the 
 knowledge may be always true. If, however, in order to 
 know the nature of a thing more profoundly, we must 
 more thoroughly elaborate that thing and transform the 
 data of thought, as Hegel says, this does not mean that 
 we must necessarily recognize as false the knowledge which 
 we had before, but merely that, if into the knowledge 
 which we had before there has entered any error through 
 our wills, that error is dropped and then other explicit 
 determinations are added to the thing. But the whole of 
 this operation is always performed by means of the idea 
 of being, from the womb of which is drawn all that before 
 was virtual, and of new sensible experiences, which show
 
 58 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 new real forces and phenomena. In this way knowledge 
 increases, but does not change. It always increases 
 through the two elements, the ideal and the real, given 
 to thought and not produced by it, although thought may 
 seek them with its own activity, in the same way as the 
 eye may seek for the various tints in a picture, without 
 thereby creating them " {TJieosophy, vol. ii. §§ 820-826). 
 
 This passage clearly shows the position of Rosmini's 
 philosophy, and how it steers clear of both sensism and 
 idealism, by according to both what properly belongs to 
 them, without allowing the one to trench upon the domain 
 of the other. Our knowledge is not entirely made up of 
 sensation, as the materialists hold, nor is it entirely made 
 up of ideas, as the idealists assert ; but it contains two 
 distinct elements, both of which are absolutely and equally 
 necessary to it. On the insufficiency of sensation to 
 account for the facts of knowledge, see an excellent essay 
 by Professor Luigi Ferri, Sidla Dottrina Psicologica deW 
 Associazionc, Rome, 1878 (Reale Accademia dei Lincei). 
 
 We have seen above, under § 15, Rosmini's definition 
 of essence. He elsewhere says, " Essence is that which 
 is thought in the idea of the thing. We therefore know 
 as many essences as there are things of which we have 
 any idea. To say that we know essences, in this sense, 
 is a mode of speech, which will be easily understood if we 
 make the following observation. When we say * the 
 essence of a thing ' — for example, of tree, of man, of colour, 
 of size, or the like, — we use, in order to indicate the thing 
 whose essence we are looking for, certain words — tree, 
 man, colour, size, etc. Now, what are the words thus 
 applied meant to signify .-' We have seen that ' words are 
 applied to things in so far as we know these,' and if we 
 add to them a wider signification, we abuse them, pass 
 into darkness, among creations of fancy. When, therefore, 
 I say tree, man, colour, size, etc., I mean things in so far 
 as they are known to me ; otherwise I could not name 
 them. What, then, is the meaning of looking for the 
 essence of tree, man, colour, size, etc. .? Simply examining 
 what these words mean, what idea men have attached to
 
 ESSENCE. 59 
 
 them respectively. Shall I look for what they have not 
 attached to these words ? In that case I shall be looking 
 no longer for the essence of tree, man, etc., but for the 
 essence of something unnamed and unknown, for which 
 I could not even make the search. 
 
 " But if this is the meaning of essence, some one will 
 say, it is that which is included in the definition of things, 
 neither more nor less. Precisely, and in this and in no 
 other sense the ancients understood the term essence. 
 ' Essential says St. Thomas, ' coinpreJiendit in se ilia tantuui 
 qii<2 cadiint in definitione speciei' {Snin. Th., i. 3, 3) " {New 
 Essay, vol. iii. §§ 121 3, 12 14). 
 
 Considerable exception might be taken to this identi- 
 fication of knowing zvhat a thing is with knowing the 
 essence of a thing. The former phrase merely implies 
 power to distinguish by means of the senses, while the 
 latter indicates intellectual comprehension. Many people 
 know what a circle is who do not know its essence. 
 Aristotle very carefully distinguished between to ri Ian and 
 TO Ti rjv eivai, and identified the latter alone with essence 
 (ovaia).* In the case of being, however, which is purely 
 intellectual, the distinction does not hold, so that, in regard 
 to it, Rosmini's language is strictly correct, although hardly 
 felicitous. 
 
 19. 
 But if, after knowing the essence of being, when i 
 
 1 r 1 • 1 ■ 1 affirm a 
 
 I arnrm to myself, that is, know, that a particular particular 
 
 1 , . . 1 1 T 1 1 ^'^^^ being, 
 
 real being exists, what do 1 know more than what do i 
 before ? Before answering this question, I must more than 
 meditate on the affirmative act whereby I arrive 
 at this new coQ^nition : I must scrutinize the 
 nature and grounds of it. Why then do I affirm 
 
 * See Trendelenburg, Aristoiel/'s De Aniind, Lib. III. pp. 192 sqq. ; 
 Bonitz, Aristotelis Lletaphys., •^'^. 311 sqq., and the authorities and passages 
 there cited.
 
 6o 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 The cause 
 of affirma- 
 tion a feel- 
 ing. 
 
 The 
 
 formula 
 for affirm- 
 ative cog- 
 nitions. 
 
 that a beino- exists ? What causes me to do so ? 
 What is this existence ? It is clear that, in many 
 cases, if not in all, what induces me to make the 
 affirmation is a feeling. For example, that which 
 causes me to affirm the existence of external 
 bodies is the sensations which they produce in 
 me. I am induced to affirm the existence of my 
 own body by the peculiar feelings which I have 
 of it. Lastly, I am led by an inner sense or 
 feeling to affirm that I myself exist. In all these 
 cases, what makes me affirm that a particular real 
 being exists, is feeling. Hence, in the given 
 cases, every affirmation, every judgment whereby 
 I affirm that a particular real being exists, may be 
 reduced to this form : there is a feeling ; there- 
 fore there exists a beino-. 
 
 In this section the author passes to real being, which, 
 according to him, is presented to us only through the 
 senses, and known to us only through a perception, in- 
 volving a judgment. "Being has two modes, the ideal and 
 the real. Ideal being is the form of cognition, real being 
 its material" {New Essay, vol. iii. § ii 66). "In the state 
 in which nature places us here below at our birth, we have 
 no intellectual perception of anything but of ourselves and 
 bodies. In truth, we cannot perceive the subsistence of a 
 being unless it operate upon us, unless we feel its action. 
 Feeliiig, therefore, is necessary to the intellective perception 
 of a subsistent entity" {Ibid., § 528). "In order that our 
 minds may perceive a thing, they must have that thing 
 present to their perceptive powers" {Ibid., § 515). "Intellec- 
 tive perception is a judgment, whereby the mind affirms 
 the subsistence of something perceived by the senses. 
 Analyzing this act of the mind, we find that it requires 
 three conditions : first, that the body which we are to 
 perceive should act on our senses and hence produce
 
 INTELLECTIVE PERCEPTION. 6i 
 
 sensations in us, since this sensible body is what is to 
 be judged to exist ; second, that we should have the idea 
 of existence, that universal which we apply to said body 
 when we say ' exist ' — a universal which does not come 
 from the senses ; thi7'd and last, that we should perform 
 an act in which we consider the action of the body upon 
 us from the side of the operating principle, and that we 
 should regard this principle as existing in itself, and differ- 
 ent from ourselves. By so doing we place it in the class of 
 existing things and close the judgment : That which strikes 
 my senses exists. Now, from this analysis of perception 
 it is plain that three distinct faculties concur and co- 
 operate in it : first, the faculty of feeling the sensible ; 
 second, the faculty which possesses the idea of existence, 
 or which intuites being, which again supplies the predi- 
 cate of the judgment ; and, lastly, the faculty which unites 
 the predicate to the subject and thus puts into the judg- 
 ment the copula, or the form of the judgment itself By 
 whatever terms we choose to designate these faculties, they 
 must always be kept distinct and never confounded " {Ibid., 
 vol. i. § 338 ; cf Psychology, vol. ii. §§ 1306 sqq.). 
 
 20. 
 
 This formula must be well studied and ana- what this 
 lyzed. It presupposes that between feeling and pTeTup- 
 real existence there is a necessary bond, such that ^°^^^" 
 there cannot be any feeling without a real being ; 
 in other words, that in some way or other the 
 essence of being, which we previously knew only 
 universally, is found realized in feeling. When, 
 therefore, a mind at first cognizant only of the 
 essence of being, without knowing that a being 
 exists, receives, experiences, observes a feeling, 
 it immediately affirms that the being of which it 
 previously knew only the essence, also exists. 
 Feeling, therefore, is that which constitutes the it is feel-
 
 62 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 ing that reality of beings. But here springs up a crowd 
 
 constitutes - , . 
 
 the reality ot ODjeCtlOnS. 
 
 of beings. 
 
 This section brings out, in a most distinct manner, the 
 point in which Rosmini's system differs from all other 
 systems, viz., in making the matter of thought (the real) 
 subjective, and its form (the ideal) objective. In this it 
 exactly reverses the common view of the position of 
 subject and object. By so doing, it avoids Kant's difficulty, 
 and cuts off the possibihty of scepticism. If the matter of 
 thought is purely subjective, and its form absolutely intel- 
 ligible, not in spite of, but by reason of, its objectivity, 
 then, of course, all question as to the reality of an external 
 \ world, and how the gulf between the mind and it is to be 
 ' bridged over, ceases. Externality itself becomes a mere 
 mode of presentation — the mode wherein the subject, by 
 means of its ideal object, re-presents its extra-subjective 
 sensations to itself, or, in other words, objectifies them. 
 
 In regard to the ancient, as compared with the modern, 
 use of the terms subject and object, the following note is of 
 some importance : — " Subject and object, two terms so fre- 
 quently employed by philosophers, may both be traced 
 back to Aristotle. According to him, vTroKH/utvov has two 
 principal meanings '.first, that of which something is predi- 
 cated in a proposition (grammatical subject) ; second, the 
 substance which in nature lies, so to speak, at the bottom 
 of actions. In both senses vwoKiijuevov was translated sub- 
 Jectiuii by the Latins (cf Boethius in Catcgor. cap. 5). 
 Object is almost the Greek ixv-iKun^vov, although the latter, 
 as being more general, is usually rendered into Latin — for 
 instance, by Boethius — by oppositum (cf Categor. 10; lib, 
 16 : De Aninid, i. i, 7 ; 402 b, 15 : ii. 4, i; 415 a, 20 : ii. 11, 12 ; 
 424 a, 1 1). Thus, throughout the Middle Age, as well as in 
 the works of Descartes and Spinoza, subject has the meaning 
 of substrate substance. Spinoza, in his Principia Philo- 
 sophies Cartesiance, p. 1 1, edit. Paul [vol. i. p. 29, edit. Bruder], 
 says, * Omnis res cui inest immediate, ut in subjecto . . . 
 aliqiia proprietas . . . cujus realis idea in nobis est, vacatur
 
 SUBJECT AND OBJECT. 63 
 
 substantia.' Hence stibjective being {esse subjectivoruiii) is 
 now used in Germany with a sense exactly contrary to that 
 in which it was used by WilHam of Occam in the fourteenth 
 century. In the works of that philosopher it means some- 
 thing in nature lying outside of the mind and not formed 
 merely by thought, whereas objective being {esse objectivorimt) 
 is explained as Hpstun cognosci adeoqne esse qnoddani ficttim ' 
 {Sententi(S, Bk. i. dist. 2, qujest. 8). From this will further be 
 clear what is meant by realitas objectiva in Descartes, e.g. 
 Meditations, iii. In Germany, owing chiefly to the influence 
 of Kant and Fichte, the use of these words has been 
 exactly inverted. Subject means that which knows ; object, 
 on the contrary, is a thing, in so far as it subjected to 
 thought, but as preserving its own nature free from the 
 opinions of the knower. Hence subjective is what depends 
 upon the difl"erent states of the knower ; objective, what is 
 based upon the constant nature of the thing itself" 
 (Trendelenburg, Elenienta Logices Aristotele(B, p. 54, n.). It 
 will be seen from this that Rosmini uses the two terms 
 partly in the ancient, partly in the modern sense, but 
 rather in the former than in the latter. Subject, according 
 to him, is " a sentient individual, in so far as it contains 
 within itself a supreme active principle." ''Intellective 
 subject is a subject that intuites ideal being." ''Human 
 subject is a subject, the principle at once of animality and 
 intelligence" {Anthropology, § 'j6']). Object of thought, on 
 the contrary, is defined as " a thing present to us in itself. 
 A thing in itself \jDing an sich] means a thing in its ex- 
 istence ; and, since to exist and to be present are different 
 from to act, the object of thought is essentially a thing 
 different from us as thinking beings. The truth of this is 
 shown when I think myself. In that act, I, the subject, 
 become the object of my own thought. At the same time, 
 in thinking of myself, I consider myself in so far as I exist 
 and no farther. The essential character, therefore, of 
 thought is, that it terminates in an object, that is, in a thing 
 different from the thinking subject, as such " {New Essay, 
 vol. iii. § 1093). According to Rosmini, nothing can be an 
 object of the mind but pure being and its modifications.
 
 64 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 that is, ideas (see note under § i8), which the mind is 
 enabled to form by using its feehngs to determine pure 
 being. These ideas every mind forms relatively to itself, 
 but does not form absolutely (see under § 42). Ideas, as 
 logical possibilities, are eternal, necessary, and independent 
 of any finite subject (cf § 35). 
 
 In what 
 sense the 
 essence of 
 being is 
 universal. 
 
 21. 
 
 The first objection that presents itself is, that 
 the intuitive knowledge of being, which precedes 
 every affirmation of real being, relates to a uni- 
 versal being, while all affirmed being is particular. 
 The answer to this is, that the essence of the beinof 
 which is known intuitively, is not universal, but 
 that the word tmiversal, which is joined to it as an 
 attribute, expresses the mode in which it is cog- 
 nized : hence, when we affirm that that essence is 
 realized, we do not affirm this realization of the 
 mode in which the essence is known, but of the 
 essence itself. 
 
 As to the nature of universality, see citations under 
 §§ 17, 24. The phrase, "the essence of being is realized," 
 presents some difficulties, and has even caused differences 
 of opinion among Rosmini's disciples. In order to under- 
 stand its meaning fully, we must bear in mind that, in 
 Rosmini's view, all being involves a principle and a term. 
 Term, in his language, bears the same relation to end that 
 principle does to beginning (see under §§ 15, 18, 22). 
 When, therefore, he says that the essence of being is 
 realized, he merely means that the principle of being must 
 necessarily have a 'term. This principle is given to us by 
 intuition ; when we find the terms in feeling, we recognize 
 them as such, and call them realizations of the essence of 
 being. " It is easy," he says, " to see that what is wanting to
 
 UNIVERSALITY. 65 
 
 the perfection of the behig naturally intuited by us is its 
 terms. We conceive this activity which is called being ; 
 but we do not see where it issues, in what it terminates ; 
 just as if we knew that a certain man was working, 
 without knowing the term of his action — whether, for 
 example, he was making a statue, a picture, or something 
 else. Not knowing, therefore, by nature, wherein that 
 activity which we conceive and call being terminates, we 
 come to find : 
 
 " First, that the intuition of this activity cannot by 
 itself impart to us the knowledge of any real thing, be- 
 cause real things are so many terms of that activity which 
 is called being. 
 
 " Second, that the being naturally intuited by us is 
 indeterminate, which means devoid of terms ; universal, 
 inasmuch as it is capable of receiving all those terms 
 which it has not ; possible or in potentiality, inasmuch 
 as it has not a terminated or absolute act, but only a 
 principle of act. In a word, . . . that which we see by 
 nature is the first activity of being, without its terms, by 
 means of which alone it natures itself and forms a real 
 subsistence. 
 
 " Third, that if this being, evolving itself more mani- 
 festly before our minds, should put forth its own ac- 
 tivity and so terminate and complete itself, we should see 
 God. . . . 
 
 ^^ Fourth, and finally, that the other activity presented 
 to us by feeling, inasmuch as it does not issue from being 
 itself, the form of our intelligence, but comes from else- 
 where, is seen as essentially separate and distinct from it ; 
 but that, nevertheless, this activity is judged by means of 
 it, and known to be dependent on it, known as a term of it, 
 partial, contingent, and inconfusible with it " {New Essay, 
 vol. iii. §§ 1 177, 1 178 ; cf. Buroni, Deir Essere e del Conoscere, 
 §§ 175) 176) where the author, Avith some reason, objects to 
 the phrase, "ideal being realizes itself").
 
 66 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 22, 
 
 Examina- Other difficulties arise in regard to our state- 
 
 objections^ ment that the real existence of being lies in 
 idenUfica- feeling : first, because we see that many feelings 
 reality change, while the subject of them remains iden- 
 
 ing. ^^ tical ; second, because external bodies have no 
 feeling, and yet they are affirmed and believed 
 to exist. In resfard to the former of these diffi- 
 culties, we must observe that the subject of the 
 feelings which change is itself a feeling, otherwise 
 it would not be known ; or, to avoid all discussion 
 on this point, let us say, at least, that it is a 
 sentient principle, having an essential relation to 
 feeling, and that, therefore, it cannot be entirely 
 sundered from feeling. In regard to external 
 bodies, they are perceived only in so far as they 
 act in the feeling we have of ourselves ; hence 
 they are known only through their relation to 
 feeling, as active principles modifying feeling. 
 They, therefore, fall under feeling as agents in it. 
 Every real being, therefore, known to us by 
 experience, reduces itself in the last analysis to 
 feeling, to the principle of feeling, or to certain 
 virtues that act in feeling. To include the whole 
 in one phrase and avoid discussion, let us say that 
 what is affirmed, in the perception of a real being, 
 to be a being, is always a felt activity. Let us 
 now continue our analysis of the affirmation of 
 real beings. 
 
 Rosmini defines reality of being as " being in so far as it 
 is feeling, or in so far as it has the power to produce or
 
 FEELING AND REALITY. 67 
 
 modify feeling," and concludes that " perception is a com- 
 munication between two realities, the one of which is 
 sentient, the other sensiferous {sensifera) " {^Psychology, 
 vol. i. § 54). 
 
 Rosmini is well aware that this doctrine is both novel 
 and startling, and he is, therefore, at considerable pains to 
 justify it. In answer to the question whether real being 
 is always reducible to a feeling, he says, " In the first 
 place, if we pay attention to experience, we see that it 
 gives us no real beings except those that are of the nature 
 either of a term or a principle. Now, principles are sub- 
 jects, all endowed with feeling, and terms are what is felt ; 
 but this again has reference to the sentient subject, and is 
 therefore in feeling. But, if we apply to these data of 
 experience analytic reasoning, we find : 
 
 ^^ First, that the word _/>tVzV/^ signifies properly the com- 
 pleted act of the sentient subject. 
 
 " Second, that the felt term is either proper or foreign. 
 ... If it is proper, it is the sentient principle itself as 
 felt, because a proper term is one whose being is identical 
 with that of its principle. Thus, in the feeling expressed 
 by the word /, the sentient and the felt are identified. In 
 such cases, therefore, the feeling belongs to the term as 
 much as to the principle. 
 
 " Third, that if, on the contrary, the term is foreign, it has 
 indeed an ' essential relation ' to the foreign principle with 
 which it is united, but the proper act of the foreign prin- 
 ciple does not belong to it, and, therefore, neither does its 
 feeling. Hence it presents itself to our view simply as 
 matter of feeling, matter which, though felt, might equally 
 well not be felt. This is the reason why we are wont to 
 think that entities, themselves devoid of feeling, but 
 capable of being felt or not felt, have matter. Thus, the 
 common mode of thinking is justified, and this fact does 
 not, in the smallest degree, interfere with the philosophical 
 truths which we have set forth, since the ordinary thought 
 does not reach them, having no reason to occupy itself 
 with them. Among these truths there is this, that every 
 foreign term must necessarily have a principle of its own,
 
 68 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 which is beyond our experience. Now, the feehng of this 
 principle belongs to that entity which to us is a foreign 
 term, and, therefore, that too comes within the domain of 
 feeling. But that entity which to us is a foreign term is 
 not felt by its own principle as it is felt by us,* because by 
 us it is felt as foreign and devoid of all principle of its 
 own, is felt solely in so far as it acts by exciting a feeling 
 in the principle foreign to it, which feeling is entirely dif- 
 ferent from the feeling felt by its own principle. Indeed, 
 the two sentient principles in question are altogether 
 different. Hence, in the term of our feeling three things 
 must be distinguished : first, the term actually felt, and this 
 is what receives a name and is talked about — for example, 
 the name body ; second, the supposed matter, which is not 
 felt — an abstract entity formed by the removal from the 
 felt of the quality of being felt, after which there remains 
 an unknown something, which is known only as capable of 
 being felt ; third, the matter felt, not by us, but by its own 
 principle, with a feeling totally different from ours. This 
 matter, accordingly, which lies between the two feelings, is 
 considered as matter identical in the two. But, properly 
 speaking, it has no existence apart from the two sentients. 
 It is merely a sort of figment of our limited mode of 
 conceiving, and, therefore, is not even identical in the 
 two feelings. On the contrary, the feeling felt by its own 
 principle has no matter, since the felt is the feeling itself. 
 Nevertheless, the concept of this matter formed by our 
 limited minds, or constituting, at least, the negation of 
 them, is not entirely useless, inasmuch as, in connection 
 with our own feeling, it points to a truth, namely, that our 
 feeling presupposes and demands an entity beyond what it 
 feels, an entity which remains entirely unknown to ex- 
 perience, and which is called the matter of feeling, because 
 its relation to feeling is the only thing we know about it. 
 However, we should fall into error, were we to suppose 
 that this something lying beyond what we feel bore any 
 
 * This completely disposes of Mamiani's objection to the sensivity of matter. 
 Rosmini, of course, does not mean that a fruit feels its own sweetness, or a 
 stone its own weight. See Coiifessioni di un Mdafisico, vol. i. pp. 44 sq.
 
 IDEAL AND REAL BEING. 69 
 
 resemblance to that feeling. Hence, the concept of this 
 matter does not help us to know what that matter is in 
 itself, but merely to know that there is a real entity (of 
 unknown nature) standing in sensible contact with our 
 sentient principle, which contact is the origin of what we 
 feel. Now, this negative concept is the concept of d. piLve, 
 abstract reality, which is something anterior to feeling, and 
 for that reason denominated pure, as being that whereby 
 we begin to know reality. Such knowledge is, of course, 
 relative and imperfect. 
 
 " Fourth, that in every feeling, as well as in every felt, 
 there is an activity. Now, abstraction is wont to separate 
 even the activity of feeling from feeling itself, and to give 
 to this activity the name of pure reality, that is, reality 
 separated from the feeling which completes it. But here, 
 too, we must beware of taking the products of abstraction 
 for self-existent entities, for real beings. The truth in 
 regard to feeling is, that, when we set aside the foreign 
 terms, its activity itself is feeling" {Theosophy, vol. v. 
 p. 145, sq., cap. xxxviii.). On the meaning of principle 
 and term, see under §§ 15, 18. 
 
 When we affirm that the essence of being is identity 
 realized in a felt activity, we af¥irm that a real the essence 
 
 1 • • T T 1 1 • r °f being 
 
 being exists. Hence to know the existence 01 and the 
 a real being is to affirm a kind of identity between manifoted 
 the essence of being and the activity manifested " ^'^"^s- 
 in feeling. 
 
 This is one of the cardinal points of the system. All 
 that we mean when we assert a thing to be real, is that 
 what we feel on any particular occasion is. By thus 
 placing a feeling in being, we separate it from our sub- 
 jective self, and regard it as having an existence of its 
 own (see under § 32). In this way it becomes to us a
 
 70 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 reality, whereof the being which we impart is the substance 
 (see §§ "^^^ sq.), and the feehng the attribute or determina- 
 tion. The phrase " manifested in feeling" is not, strictly 
 speaking, correct. Feeling, as such, has no power of 
 manifestation. 
 
 "Although ideal being can never be confounded with 
 real being, yet the connection between the two is won- 
 derful. It is such that, if the two are taken together, they 
 form but one and the same identical being, having two 
 modes, or, as we might say, two original and primitive 
 forms. Hence it is more correct to say the ideal mode or 
 the real mode of being, than to say ideal being d,nd real being, 
 as if they were two. And even common sense shows that 
 it knows perfectly this conjunction, this basis of identity, 
 between the ideal and the real, by the way in which it 
 imposes and uses terms ; for it does not impose on each 
 thing two names, but one, and with this one it is wont to 
 express both the ideal being of a thing and its real being. 
 For example, the word house was invented to signify both 
 the house which the architect imagines and builds in his 
 mind and the house which adorns the public square of a 
 city" {La Sapienza, ii. 7, p. 401, sqq.). 
 
 24. 
 
 ™s . This identity, indeed, is not complete, inasmuch 
 
 isimper- as no activity, whether felt or feeling (sentient), 
 ever exhausts the essence of being ; hence the in- 
 numerable feelings which make us affirm the ex- 
 istence of so many real beings different from each 
 other. In regard to each we affirm that it exists. 
 Of each we affirm the same thing : in each we 
 recognize the essence of being. This recognizing 
 of the essence of bein^ in each is the same thine 
 as saying that the essence of each of these beings 
 which we affirm is identical with the essence of
 
 UNIVERSA LI TV. 7 1 
 
 being which we knew before by intuition, and 
 that, too, in spite of the fact that they are all 
 different beings. We must, therefore, admit that, 
 however different they may be in other respects, 
 inasmuch as they are all beings, they have one 
 common element, the essence of being. Let it 
 be noted that in all this we only observe and Fuller ex- 
 analyze the fact of the cognition of real beings, ofmeaninc 
 without drawing any conclusions from it. Still, versai 
 now that we know that the essence of beino^ is ^'"^' 
 realized in all the reality of the real beings which 
 we affirm, we can better understand the meaning 
 of the phrase universal being employed by us. 
 Being is universal in this sense, that it may be 
 realized in many particular beings, and that we 
 know all real beings by it alone. This univer- 
 sality, therefore, Is not in It, but is a relation in 
 which it stands to real beings. 
 
 That the universality of ideas lies in their application, 
 and not in their nature, is a doctrine often insisted on by 
 Rosmini. " Any one who has clearly understood the 
 nature of the idea of being must have observed that 
 mental being is at once particidar and itniversal ; in- 
 deed, that it is particular, that is, singular, long before 
 it is universal. And surely we have shown that a uni- 
 versal means nothing else but a relation of similitude 
 between one thing and many. Now, before a thing can 
 be considered in a relation of similitude with many, it 
 must first have been considered or perceived in itself, 
 and hence in its singularity. The unity of a thing, 
 therefore, which, as we have elsewhere said, is identical 
 with its existence, precedes the consideration of its uni- 
 versality. Hence, we may say with truth, that, when we 
 begin with being, we begin with a singular, inasmuch as 
 it is singular in itself, while at the same time it is a light
 
 72 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 diffusing itself universally on all cognizable things. This 
 reflection has special force as applied to the idea of being. 
 In fact, ideal being is in the highest degree simple, essen- 
 tially one, the principle of unity in all things, and, hence, 
 not only singular in itself, but also the source of all true 
 unity and singularity " {Neiv Essay, vol. iii. § 1474 ; com- 
 pare citation under § 17). Rosmini defines universality 
 thus : " By universality we mean that quality which the 
 mind discovers in an entity conceived by it, by which 
 quality that entity can exist in an infinite number of 
 individuals, always remaining identical." Setting out from 
 this definition, he concludes : 
 
 " First, thdit precategorical absolute being cannot, properly 
 speaking, be said to be universal, because it does not exist 
 in an infinite number of modes, but only in the three 
 categoric modes (cf. below, under § 166). 
 
 " Second, that universality is something different from 
 identity, since the former can exist without the latter. 
 Thus, absolute being, in so far as it is ideal, is single, and 
 therefore not universal, and its realization is not merely 
 possible, but actual. 
 
 "7^/^/r^, that being, intuited without the terms that com- 
 plete it, is that which has the greatest universality, that in 
 which, as in its native seat, universality resides, in w'hich 
 exists first universality, that from which all universality 
 flows to every other entity. 
 
 "Fourth, that, nevertheless, the universality which flows 
 from initial being, or being separated by the act of the 
 mind from its terms, to other conceivable entities, appears 
 in two shapes " {Theosophy, vol. v. p. 95, n.). The two 
 kinds of universality here referred to are the generic and 
 the relational. The former belongs to all forms or ideas, 
 the latter to matter considered in itself. 
 
 Elsewhere Rosmini says, "This word universal ex- 
 presses a relation of manifesting being to the things mani- 
 fested, and this relation is discovered only by the reflection 
 of the philosopher, who has advanced far enough to con- 
 front manifesting being with the things manifested, and 
 to bring out the fact that the former is the means whereby
 
 ESSENCE AND REALIZATION. 73 
 
 the latter are known" {Theosophy, vol. iv. p. 459; cf. 
 Buroni, DeW Essere e del Conoscere, pp. 6^ sqq.). Buroni 
 is entirely wrong when he writes a chapter to prove that 
 Being is in itself nnivet'sal, and does not become such by 
 virtue of the mind {Ibid., pp. 46, 47). Indeed, he is not 
 able to bring forward a single passage from Rosmini in 
 support of this view. 
 
 25- 
 
 But if the beings which we affirm agree only The 
 
 1 • ^ ^•rr • essence of 
 
 in being beings, and differ in other respects, are being is 
 not these respects in which they differ themselves in the dif- 
 
 . . f. - , . ^ , .. ference as 
 
 SO many entities or lorms 01 being : Assuredly : well as in 
 if they were not entities, they would not be at tity of real 
 all. Hence the essence of beings is realized in ^^"^' 
 that wherein they differ as well as that wherein 
 they agree. Even in these differences, in those 
 modes in which they are, is found the identical 
 essence of being. 
 
 26. 
 
 Corollaries 
 
 But how can this identical essence of being" ^^'i' , 
 
 '-' derived 
 
 be realized in so many different beinsfs, and notf™"^.^^^^ 
 
 -' ^ ' identity of 
 
 merely in that which they have in common, but t^^ essence 
 
 ^ ■' of being 
 
 also in that which is peculiar to each ? For an an^i the 
 
 multipli- 
 
 answer to this question we must appeal to ob- city of its 
 
 realiza- 
 
 servation, and, instead of concluding ^^/rz^^-z how tions. 
 the thing might be or ought to be, satisfy our- 
 selves of how it is. Now, this philosophical ob- 
 servation plainly tells us that every real being, 
 as well as every difference between real beings, 
 is always a realization of the essence of being
 
 74 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 previously known to us. The essence of being 
 is identical ; its realizations are many and various. 
 Hence — 
 
 I. The essence of being has various grades 
 and modes of realization. 
 
 II. None of these finite grades or modes of 
 realization exhausts the essence of being, which 
 may, therefore, always be realized in other grades 
 and modes — whether ad infinitum, we will not 
 now inquire. 
 
 III. The different grades and modes in which 
 the essence of being is realized are all limited ; 
 for it is with these alone that we are dealing, and 
 these limitations constitute their difference. Now, 
 these limitations which occur in real beings are 
 so far from belonging to the essence of being that 
 they are non-beings. Hence the essence of being 
 is realized in the various beings, in so far as they 
 are beings, not in so far as they are non-beings. 
 This realization is limited, and, in so far as it is 
 limited, its identity with the known essence of 
 being ceases. 
 
 IV. The essence of being, therefore, is capable 
 of a higher or lower realization ; but, in so far as 
 it is realized, it is entirely (not totally) realized, 
 for the reason that it is one and indivisible ; just 
 as the entire essence of wine is as truly in a 
 single drop as in a whole butt. This implies that 
 we require the whole of the essence of being in 
 order to know even a small part of real being, 
 just as we require the whole of the essence of 
 wine in order to know even a drop of wine.
 
 QUANTITY AND BEING. 75 
 
 27. 
 
 These observations enable us to conclude that Quantity 
 
 . belongs to 
 
 quantity is something belonging to the realization, the reaii- 
 
 . zation, not 
 
 and not to the essence, of being. We must to the 
 
 • essence of 
 
 further observe that it is to quantity we must bebg. ' 
 have recourse in order to explain the limitations, 
 the different modes, grades, differences of being, 
 number, etc., all of which belong, not to the 
 essence of being, but to the laws of its realization. 
 
 In these three sections the author takes up the question 
 how pure simple being, the constitutive object of intel- 
 Hgence (see below, under §§ 35, 36), comes to be deter- 
 mined into real things. This, as we see at a glance, is the 
 old and much-vexed problem of the One and the Many, 
 which caused so much trouble to early Greek thinkers. 
 The career of this problem is one of the most curious in 
 the whole history of philosophy. As very often happens 
 in such cases, it presented itself most clearly to the first 
 person to whom it occurred, viz., Parmenides. The thinkers 
 previous to him had found no difficulty in assuming a 
 simple substance and making it determine itself Even 
 Herakleitos made his One, fire, enter into the process of 
 its own determination, and thus arrived at his famous 
 dictum : " All things pass and nothing remains (jravTa 
 XW|oa Kot ouSfv luivsi)." He identified being with nothing, 
 and made War the father of all things (7roXf/ioc iravTOJv 
 Trariip) (vid. Bywater, Hcraditi Ephesii Fragi/icnta, p. 18, 
 no. xliv.) ; but how this identity in diversity came about, 
 or where the War came frotn, he did not stop to inquire. 
 Parmenides, severely criticizing the followers of Hera- 
 kleitos,* whom he calls — 
 
 * See Schuster, Heraklit von Ephcsiis {Ada Soc. Philolog. Lipsiensis, 
 vol. iii. pp. 1-398), pp. 36 sq., and compare my translation of the Fragments 
 of Parmenides, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. iv. no. i (1870).
 
 76 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 " Deaf and dumb and blind and stupid unreasoning cattle," 
 (KoK^ol Ojuais Tv(pXoi re, TeQrjizoTis, &KpiTa ((>v\a), 
 
 lays it down that being, pure and simple, alone is true, 
 eternal, necessary, and unchangeable, whereas all its de- 
 terminations are merely phenomenal {irfjog ^6E,av) ; in other 
 words, that being is independent of any subject, whereas 
 all determination is purely subjective. He, moreover, 
 identifies thought with being (ro yap avrd voi7v laTiv re kuI 
 elvat). According to this theory the universe is self-thinking 
 being, and all phenomena are subjective delusions. To 
 get rid of this latter consequence, Plato, drawing partly 
 upon Anaxagoras' doctrine of a world-ordering intel- 
 ligence or vovg, and partly upon Pythagoras' theory of 
 numbers having a similar function, split up Parmenides' 
 one being into a large number of parts, which he called 
 ideas, and connected these with the phenomenal world by 
 making the Divinity create or order the latter in accordance 
 with them. Previous to the time of Sokrates and Plato, 
 philosophical inquiry had been directed solely to the ques- 
 tion how things are, not to the question how they are 
 known. The literal acceptance by the sophists of Par- 
 menides' doctrine, that all phenomenal knowledge is 
 purely subjective, now, however, made the latter the 
 burning question. Plato made an heroic effort to redeem 
 human knowledge from mere subjectivity, by claiming for 
 the soul a prenatal existence, in which it had had imme- 
 diate knowledge of eternal ideas, whereof the things of the 
 material world, into which by birth it had fallen, were 
 only faint copies, hardly more than sufficient to recall the 
 originals. By so doing he assumed two distinct pheno- 
 menal worlds (independent ideas, in order to be known, 
 must become phenomenal even to disembodied spirits), 
 connected by a deus ex machina, and rescued the objectivity 
 of knowledge only at the expense of making man a fallen 
 creature. Moreover, he did not succeed in accounting for 
 either theunity of consciousness or the unity of the world. 
 Aristotle got rid of a few of the more glaring of Plato's 
 difficulties and paradoxes, by uniting the ideal with the 
 real world as form with matter, and making the former
 
 THE ONE AND THE MANY. 77 
 
 synonymous with intelligence. According to this doctrine, 
 ideas or forms (Ao'yot, u^vi) think themselves in two ways : 
 first, with matter, in feeling and its correlated objects ; 
 second, without matter, in intelligence, which is one with 
 its objects. Aristotle, indeed, plainly tells us that feelings 
 are ideas in matter,* that the intelligent soul is the place 
 and form of forms,t and identical with its own objects.^ 
 How ideas or forms come to connect themselves with 
 matter, or to assemble in one place, or to range themselves 
 under one supreme form, he does not tell us, so that his 
 doctrine is rather a clear statement of a difficulty than the 
 solution of it. Indeed, that doctrine, if accepted as a 
 solution, would do away with both subject and object, and 
 leave " nothing but a bundle of ideas dancing through 
 space to the tune of associations." The truth is that the 
 ancient world furnished no solution of the problem of 
 cognition. Indeed, it never even succeeded in stating it. 
 Nor was the mediaeval world a whit more fortunate. The 
 best of the Scholastics did nothing more than try to re- 
 concile the theories of Plato and Aristotle and dispute over 
 the locality of universals, as they termed ideas. Even 
 St. Thomas, as we have already said, had no consistent 
 theory of cognition. What with nominalism, realism, con- 
 ceptualism, intelligible species, and the rest, the original 
 form of the problem, as it presented itself to Parmenides, was 
 utterly forgotten ; so that, even when modern philosophy 
 arose, that problem not only remained unsolved, but did 
 not even seem to call for solution. Philosophy, from 
 Descartes to Hume, remained essentially in the position 
 in which Aristotle left it, failing utterly to account either 
 for the unity of consciousness or the unity of the world. 
 Indeed, Hume's result was precisely the same as Aris- 
 totle's, though reached by a different process, and much 
 more clearly and consciously stated. Both abolished not 
 
 * " Ta irddrt \6yoi evv\oi elffiv" {De Animd, i. I, 10 ; 403 a, 25). 
 
 t " Kal eS St/ ol KiyovTis T7}V ^vxh^ elvat t6ttov elSiiov, ir\rjv Sri ovre SAtj 
 dAA.' T] voTiTiKi}, ovT€ eVTeA.€X€ia aWa 5wd/j,it to eli'Srj " (De Am'wif, iii. 4, 4 ; 
 429 a, 27 sq.). " Kai yap rj x^^P ijpyai'61' iffTiv opyavwv, koI 6 vovs eJSos elSoiii/" 
 {Ibid., iii. 8, 2 ; 432 a, i sq.). 
 
 \ "Tavrhi/ vovs Ka\ voi^rdu" (^Mctaph., xi. 7 ; 1072 b, 20).
 
 78 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 only the objects, but even the subjects, of thought, and 
 left nothing in the universe but associated ideas, each 
 thinking itself. The bold statement of this doctrine 
 brought Kant into the field, and with him a new epoch 
 in philosophy. Kant's great merit lay in drawing a clear 
 distinction between the matter and the form of thought. 
 His error lay in substituting forms for the form, and 
 making these attributes of the subject. His twelve cate- 
 gories have no essential connection with each other, and 
 are not derived from an analysis of the primary act of 
 cognition, but from that of the various forms of secondary 
 judgments. Moreover, by making these categories or 
 forms subjective, while sensation, the matter of cognition, 
 is manifestly so, he rendered thought and cognition entirely 
 subjective, and, as his successors abundantly showed, all 
 objectivity purely problematical. Hegel carried the doc- 
 trines of Kant to their ultimate conclusions. Dropping 
 the problematical objective, and stringing together Kant's 
 categories by a coil of negations, he resuscitated, in a com- 
 plicated form, the old doctrine of Herakleitos, against 
 which Parmenides had, ages before, so vigorously protested. 
 By making being identify itself with nothing, in order to 
 impel it to start on a career of self-determination, he 
 annihilates not only it, but likewise the possibility of 
 anything, and arrives at pure nihilism. To be sure, by 
 conjuring with the word identity, so as to make it mean 
 negative correlation (full : not full), or more frequently 
 contrary correlation (full : empty), and by abusively calling 
 what all other men have hitherto understood by the term, 
 viz. absolute sameness, " naughty identity " {scJdechte 
 Identitdt), he succeeds in creating a word-world, which he 
 tries to pass off for real. But Hegel's wonderful structure 
 has, in truth, no reality other than vocal, and no unity 
 other than grammatical. Thus, when Rosmini appeared, 
 philosophy had forgotten, amid a multitude of secondary 
 questions, the original problem of Parmenides, and had 
 wandered back to the doctrine of Herakleitos and nihilism. 
 Rosmini resuscitated the Eleatic problem, brought it into 
 connection with the Kantian distinction between the form
 
 NEGATIVE IDEAS. 79 
 
 and matter of thought, and so, by a careful analysis of the 
 primary act of cognition, arrived at the conclusion that the 
 One (being) is the form of cognition ; the Many, its matter. 
 He moreover showed, by a careful examination of Kant's 
 categories, that while they were all subjective but one, 
 that one, viz. being, was necessarily objective, and the very 
 essence of objectivity. In this way he introduced a neces- 
 sary, objective element into cognition, and so made true 
 cognition possible. Rosmini's solution of the problem, how 
 being comes to be determined, lies in showing that being 
 exists essentially in two forms — one ideal and undeter- 
 mined, the other real and determined (see §§ 18, 21). As 
 to determinations being, as such, non-beings, see Buroni^ 
 Deir Essere e del Conoscere, pp. 95, sqq. 
 
 28. 
 
 It may be said. If all things are known ideas 
 through the essence of being, how do we come to make 
 
 , , . . f. . . 1 • 1 known the 
 
 know those negative properties 01 being which negation 
 we spoke of above, and which are not in the ° ^'"^' 
 essence of being ? Are there not ideas of par- 
 ticular beings, of their differences, etc. ? I reply 
 that it is by means of the essence of being that we 
 know all negations, since all that we know about 
 them is that they are the contrary, the negation of 
 being, and the negation of a thing is known as 
 soon as we know the thing negated. Neverthe- 
 less, it is to be observed that language imposes 
 a positive mark, a word, not only on being, but 
 also on the negation of being, and we say notJiing, 
 limit, mode, as well as being. Hence it is that all 
 these negations figure in our imaginations as if 
 they were so many entities, although they are not.
 
 8o 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L S YS TEM. 
 
 All ideas 
 of particu- 
 lar beings 
 consist of 
 positive 
 and nega- 
 tive. 
 
 There is 
 but one 
 idea, the 
 essence of 
 being, and 
 all the rest 
 are rela- 
 tions of it. 
 
 I reply, therefore, that the ideas which have as their 
 object the negation of being are only the idea of 
 being itself, //^/i" the act whereby we negate it. As 
 to ideas of particular beings, which are all made up 
 of positive and negative — in other words, of reali- 
 zation and limitation— they are only so many rela- 
 tions between real being (or the memory of real 
 being) and the essence of being, so that the idea 
 of a horse or a man, for example, is simply the 
 essence of being in so far as it may be realized in 
 a horse or a man, etc., etc. Thus the basis of our 
 knowledge of all these beings is, in every case, the 
 essence of being. The ideas, therefore, of par- 
 ticular beings are always the idea of being con- 
 sidered in relation to a certain given grade and 
 mode of realization ; whence, properly speaking, 
 there exists but one idea which makes known to 
 our minds numerous particular beings, and thus 
 transforms itself into so many concepts, becoming, 
 in this way, the special concepts of all these 
 beings. 
 
 In regard to the nature of negative ideas Rosmini is 
 very explicit : " Nothing as nothing, neither is, nor can be, 
 thought. When, therefore, we think nothing, we really think 
 a relation of contingent being, a relation which being has 
 with thought and with itself; and by which we think that 
 being either is, in which case it is thinkable, or is not, in 
 which case it is not thinkable. Now, this is not means 
 nothing more than two combined acts of the thought itself, 
 by one of which being is thought, while by the other it is 
 removed and the object of thought thereby abolished. In- 
 deed, that nothing, as thought, is not really nothing, but a 
 relation of being, may be readily seen from the numerous 
 reasonings of mathematicians in regard to nothing, and the
 
 CONTINGENCY. 8 1 
 
 various kinds of nothing which they distinguish " {Psycho- 
 logy, § 1300). On negative cognition see under § 182, 
 
 In regard to "ideas of particular beings" or particular 
 ideas, the author says, "An idea is particular only in so far as, 
 in my mind, it is attached to a real individual. As soon as 
 it is separated therefrom, it acquires, or rather manifests, 
 universality, since, when set free, it may be applied at 
 pleasure to an infinite number of similar individuals. 
 That which is absolutely peculiar or particular in an idea is 
 simply the real individual to which it adheres, and which 
 does not form part of the idea itself, but is something 
 heterogeneous to the idea, joined to it, not by nature, but 
 by the action of the intelligent mind " {Nezv Essay, vol. i. 
 § 43, n.). "Every idea is universal and necessary. And, 
 indeed, it is always the idea of being that, clothed with 
 determinate qualities derived from experience, furnishes me 
 with a quantity of ideas or concepts more or less deter- 
 minate, but representing merely possible entities and not 
 subsisting entities " {Ibid., vol. ii. § 431). 
 
 29. 
 Besides this, we must consider further, in order in respect 
 
 to quan- 
 
 clearly to see wherein consists the imperfect iden- tity, the 
 
 essence of 
 
 tity, which, as we have said, we observe between being and 
 
 . beings 
 
 the entities felt by us and the essence of bemg perceived 
 
 1-1 • • T T r -11 1 • • • - by US are 
 
 which we mtuite. We said that limitations do different, 
 
 1 . . , . TV -r r 1 "o*^ identi- 
 
 not enter into this identity. i\ ow, one 01 these cai. 
 limitations is the contingency of finite things. 
 Hence, contingency is not to be found in the 
 essence of being, so that even in this respect there 
 is opposition between contingent being and the 
 essence of being, which is intuited by us as im- 
 mutable and necessary. 
 
 "Every being," says Rosmini, "when considered in its 
 
 G
 
 82 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 logical possibility, is universal and necessary. And, indeed, 
 there is no logical reason why there should not subsist 
 any number of real beings corresponding to my one idea. 
 Hence, every idea is a light, whereby I am able to know all 
 the beings corresponding to it that subsist now or yet may 
 subsist. It is, therefore, universal, infinite. Every single 
 sensation, on the other hand, is particular. All that I feel 
 in it is limited to it. . , . The same may be said of the 
 attribute of necessity. What I contemplate as possible, I 
 know very well to be necessary ; for there is no way or mode 
 of thinking that the possible ever was impossible [cf. under 
 § 35]. Real sensation, on the contrary, may or may not be. 
 It is accidental, contingent. There is, therefore, nothing in 
 it that could awake in my mind the sense of an absolute 
 necessity " {New Essay, vol. ii. § 428). Contingent things 
 are the improper terms of ideal being. Its proper, that is, 
 its necessary term is jGod (see under § 21). How ideal 
 being comes to have improper terms is a question of Theo- 
 sophy, or even of Theology. 
 
 The iden- 
 tity be- 
 tween the 
 essence of 
 being and 
 real beings 
 exists be- 
 tween 
 them only 
 in so far as 
 they are 
 known. 
 
 It is only 
 as known 
 that real 
 being is 
 identical 
 with ideal 
 being. 
 
 Furthermore, w^hen we observe the identity 
 between real, contingent being and the essence 
 of being, we observe this identity in our pe^^cep- 
 tion and cognition, not in being as independent 
 of such perception or cognition (§ 24). 
 
 31. 
 
 In fact. It Is only In real being as known that 
 this Identity Is found or formed, and It Is in the 
 finding of It that the felt activity Is perceived and 
 cognized. It Is not until the felt activity Is Iden- 
 tified with the essence of being that it Is known
 
 THINGS KNOWN AS THEY ARE. 83 
 
 or perceived, that it becomes a perceptible entity, 
 an object. In the act of perception, therefore, 
 there is added to the felt activity something which 
 renders it a perceptible entity, and this addition 
 is being itself, the feeling or contingent felt ac- 
 tivity of which is but an imperfect mode, not 
 perceptible apart from being, but only in objective 
 being, as we shall show more clearly further on, 
 when we come to speak of perception (§§ 92-94). 
 Moreover, although the mind thus supplies an Perception 
 element of its object, oi perceived being, this does true on 
 not render its perceptions less true, since the mind count, 
 clearly knows what it adds and what is given to 
 it. Hence it knows things as they are. 
 
 In answer to the grave question, " How can the matter 
 of cognition identify itself with the form ; and if the 
 matter does not so identify itself, how can it be said to 
 be contained in the form, and to form a perfect equation 
 with it ? " Rosmini replies, '' The matter, considered in 
 itself, never does identify itself with the form of cognition. 
 On the contrary, . . . the matter in itself ... is an ac- 
 tivity different from knowing, and, therefore, still more 
 different from the form of knowing. . . . The matter of 
 cognition, so long as separated from cognition itself, re- 
 mains unknown, and there can be no question of certainty 
 with regard to it, because certainty is an attribute solely 
 of knowledge. That, therefore, which identifies itself with 
 the form of cognition is the matter of cognition, so far 
 as known. The mind, under these circumstances, merely 
 considers this matter in relation to being, and sees it con- 
 tained in being as an actuation and term of it. Hence, 
 before it is united to being, there is no identification : 
 before the matter is known, there is nothing to be said 
 about it ; but when it is united to being and thus ob- 
 jectified, when it is known to us, it has already received,
 
 84 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 in the act of our cognition, a relation, a form, a predicate, 
 which it had not before, and in this predicate consists its 
 identification with being. Being is predicated of it, and 
 in that predication consists the act whereby we know it. 
 In this way it seems to us, when we consider the matter 
 already known, that it has in itself something common 
 with all things, whereas this quality, in so far as it is 
 common, is acquired by it and received from the mind — 
 is a relation which it has to the act of the mind, a relation 
 not real in it, but only in the act of the mind. Aristotle 
 and others, not having sufficiently considered this, fell into 
 the error of supposing that the mind could derive the idea 
 of being by abstraction from what was most common in 
 things, whereas it was the mind itself that put this most 
 common quality into the things ; and when it took it from 
 them, it only reclaimed its own. Hence . . . what is 
 common in things is only a result of the relation in which 
 they stand to the intelligent mind " {New Essay, vol. iii. 
 § 1 174). St. Thomas and most modern Thomists make 
 the same blunder as Aristotle. 
 
 Why we 
 think that 
 we do not 
 know the 
 ground of 
 things. 
 
 This analysis of the nature of our knov^Iedge 
 of real beings shovi^s us why men generally have 
 a conviction that they do not know the ground 
 of things — that which causes them to be. The 
 reason of this ignorance is the fact that in all felt 
 activities this ground is wanting, and has to be 
 given or lent to them, so to speak, by the per- 
 ceiving mind itself. In other words, the mind 
 attributes to contingent things a basis, because 
 otherwise it would be incapable of perceiving 
 them ; but, inasmuch as it does not perceive this 
 basis, it is unable to determine its nature.
 
 SENSE AND INTELLECT. 85 
 
 "When our minds have received through the senses the 
 corporeal elements above described, the understanding com- 
 pletes the perception of them in the following manner : — 
 The passion [passzo, mWog] 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 expec- 
 tation of new passions. It is the understanding alone that 
 is able to perceive it as action. In so doing, the under- 
 standing 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 under- 
 standing 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 under- 
 standing. 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 iji 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 " 
 {Nezv 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
 
 86 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 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 {i.e. instinc- 
 tively), ' 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 some- 
 thing, 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 agent- 
 being, 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 "
 
 MEANING OF IDEAL BEING. 87 
 
 {New Essay, vol. iil. §§ 1206, 1207 ; cf. Theosophy, vol. ii. 
 § 868). The perception of passion by the sense is sense- 
 perception ; the perception of action, which is a function of 
 the intellect, is intellective perception. 
 
 The means, therefore, whereby we cognize Why 
 real beings is the essence of being, which, for this a means 
 reason, we have called ideal being. Be it ob-tion,1s'" 
 served, however, that the word ideal does not ^ideai. 
 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 philo- 
 sophy 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 iinivcrsal, 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 3,nd 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, Lette7'e FilosoficJie suUe Vicende dclla Filosofiia intorno ai 
 Principii della Conoscenza uniana da Ca7-tesio fino a Kant, xiv. ; Mamiani, 
 Compe7idio e Sintesi della propria Filosofia, pp. 208, sqq. ; Confcssio7ii di tin 
 Metafisico, vol. i. pp. 239, sqq.
 
 88 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Schoolmen called the means of vision sitb 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" {Delia Luce lutellettuale e dell' 
 OntologismOy vol. i. p. ii ; of. p. 6, note i). 
 
 The es- 
 sence of 
 being is 
 self-intelli- 
 gible, and 
 forms the 
 intelligi- 
 bility 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 ex- 
 ternal 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, there- 
 fore, acquired by any act of thought, but is im- 
 planted before all thought by the Author of Nature.
 
 THE LIGHT OF REASON. 89 
 
 If this be not true, let us suppose that we did not 
 know what beine 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 throus^h itself. The essence'^^f'^^^^. 
 
 •-**-' of being IS 
 
 of beiiiz, therefore, is ■ htoivable in and tJiroiio-Ji the Light 
 
 , '^ , of Reason, 
 
 itself, and is the means zvheredy zve know all other is inborn, 
 
 _ ^ and is the 
 
 things. It is, therefore, the Light of Reason, ^oxm oi m- 
 
 telligence. 
 
 From 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, pos- 
 sibility or ideality, simplicity, unity or identity, universality 
 and necessity, immutability and eternity, and indcter- 
 minateness. 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 dis- 
 tinguish the feeling of ourselves. That it cannot come
 
 90 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 from reflection is plain, inasmuch as reflection adds nothing 
 to sensation, and sensation does not contain the notion of 
 being. Finally, that it does not spring into existence in 
 the act of perception and as a result of that act, is obvious, 
 for the simple reason that that act could never be begun 
 without it {Neiv Essay, vol, ii, §§ 413-466). Hence the 
 author concludes that the idea of being is innate. " This 
 proposition," he says, " follows from the preceding ; for 
 (i) If the idea of being is so necessary that it enters essen- 
 tially into the formation of all our other ideas, so 
 that, without the use of it, we have not the faculty of 
 thinking ; 
 .(2) If this idea is not to be found in sensations ; 
 
 (3) If it cannot be derived from external or internal sen- 
 
 sations through reflection ; 
 
 (4) If it is not created in us by God in the act of percep- 
 
 tion ; 
 
 (5) Finally, if it is absurd to say that the idea of being 
 
 emanates from ourselves ; 
 it follows that the idea of being is innate in our souls, so 
 that we are born with the presence and vision of possible 
 being, albeit we do not pay attention to it until much later. 
 This demonstration by exclusion is irrefutable, provided it 
 be demonstrated that the enumeration of possible cases is 
 complete. Now, that it is complete is seen in this way. 
 The idea of being in general exists : this is the fact to be 
 explained. Since it exists, it was either given to us with 
 our nature or produced in us afterwards ; there is no third 
 alternative. If it was produced afterwards, it must have 
 been either by ourselves or by something different from 
 us ; here, also, there is no third alternative. The first 
 alternative being excluded, if it was produced by some 
 cause different from us, this cause must either be something 
 sensible (the action of bodies) or something not sensible 
 (an intelligent being different from us, God, etc.) ; here, 
 again, there is no third alternative. Now, these two cases 
 were likewise excluded. Hence the enumeration was com- 
 plete, because reduced to two alternatives, which always 
 rejected as absurd a middle term. If, therefore, all the cases
 
 MEANING OF INNATE. 91 
 
 in which the idea of being could be supposed to be given 
 to us after our coming into existence are impossible, it 
 follows that the idea of being is innate or unproduced. 
 Q. E. D." {New Essay, vol. ii. §§ 467, 468). 
 
 Rosmini's assertion that the idea of being is innate has 
 caused much misunderstanding and opposition in various 
 quarters ; but both proceed from want of attention to his 
 explanations. By " innate," Rosmini does not mean innate 
 in the subject and forming a part, or modification, or at- 
 tribute of it, but innate as form, object, presence, "We 
 must carefully attend," he says, " so as not to confound 
 two things that are altogether distinct. It is one thing 
 when we say, ' a being present to the mind,' another, when 
 we say, ' a modification of the mind.' Were it otherwise, 
 this being which we see would be nothing else than our- 
 selves modified, a mere subjective entity. . . . The intuition 
 of being gives us these two truths respecting it : first, that it 
 is a being present to the mind — objective, and not a being 
 having an independent subsistence of its own ; second, that 
 it is not a mere modification of the mind. . . . What do 
 we mean when we say, 'a being present to the mind'.? 
 We mean a being which has its existence in the mind, in 
 such a way that, if we should suppose that there was not 
 some mind to which it Avas present, it would not be at all, 
 for the reason that its mode of being is intelligibility itself, 
 outside the mind, not in the mind. By means of it we 
 know, not the act of existence in itself, but the act of 
 existence in the mind. ... In the second place, . . . 
 (being) is not a mere modification of the mind or of the 
 subject which has the intuition of it. This truth manifests 
 itself, as soon as we attentively consider universal being 
 itself In the thought of being, we see that the being 
 thought by us is the object of the mind, and, what is more, 
 likewise the objectivity of all the terms of the mind. . . . 
 It is, therefore, in its essence, distinct from the subject, and 
 from all that can belong to the subject. It is the light of 
 the subject, and superior to it. The subject is receptive 
 with respect to it, while it is essentially received in a mode 
 peculiar to itself. The subject is compelled to see it more
 
 92 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 than the open eye is compelled to see the rays of the sun 
 which it has before it and which strike its retina. Being 
 is immutable; it is what is : the subject is mutable. Being 
 imposes laws and actualizes the subject by rendering it 
 intelligent ; and since it cannot be said, in any proper 
 sense, that the subject suffers from the object (because the 
 presence of the latter merely gives it its mode and compels 
 it to rouse a new activity in itself), what takes place in the 
 subject must not be called passion {TraOog) but increase of 
 act.^ . . . Attentive observation, therefore, directed to this 
 being, which naturally shines before our minds, leads us 
 to conclude that it is an object essentially different from 
 the subject which intuites it ; that, at the same time, it is 
 not thought by us as furnished with any other existence 
 save that alone whereby it shines before our minds ; and 
 hence that, if a// mind were removed, this being would no 
 longer be conceivable, which is the reason why it is called 
 an ideal being {cntc) " (Nezu Essay, vol. iii. §§ 1440-1442). 
 This last observation respecting the removal of all mind 
 furnishes Rosmini, as we shall see, with his strongest proof 
 for the necessary existence of God (§ 179). 
 
 Meaning But the word fomi, having different signifi- 
 
 wor/ cations, requires explanation. It is used, gene- 
 
 form. ^^iiy speaking, to mean that which imparts to 
 
 a being an original constitutive act, v^hich makes 
 
 it to be what it is. Thus the essence of being, 
 
 knoAvable in and through itself, is said to be the 
 
 form of the intelligent soul, because it is that 
 
 which imparts to the soul the act whereby it is 
 
 Two intelligent. But here we must distinguish two 
 
 * Cf. the remarkable passage in Aristotle: " Ou/c ton S' anXovv ovZ\ rb 
 TTcJcrxEt*'} oXkh. rb \).\v (p6opd ris inrh rod ivavriov, rb Se eraiTTjpia /aaWov tov 
 Svvdfiei ovTos KOI dfxoiov ovtws &s Siivajnis e^ei itphs ivreXexeiav " {De Aji., 
 ii. 5, 5 ; 417 b, 2, sqq. ; also Ih'd., iii. 4, 2, 3 ; 429 a, 13, sqq.).
 
 FORM. 93 
 
 kinds of form. Notionally considered, that which senses of 
 
 , . . . . , . , . the word 
 
 imparts to a bemg its original, essential act isy^r^. 
 different from that act itself; but sometimes it 
 is part of the being itself and confounds itself 
 with the act, being separable from it only men- 
 tally and through abstraction ; at other times, it 
 is something really different from the act and 
 from the being which it informs. Thus the form 
 of a knife is the edge of the knife, belonging to, 
 and forming part of, the knife. On the contrary, 
 the form of incandescent iron is fire, somethinof 
 altogether different from the iron, but such tliat, 
 when the two are brought into contact, the one 
 becomes the form of the other, penetrating and 
 acting in the other's sphere of being. Now, in in which 
 which of these two senses is ideal being the form is the Uea 
 of intelligence ? Here, again, we must appeal to SsedT'^ 
 observation and fact, and these show us that ideal 
 being is the form of the intelligent mind in the 
 latter sense only, and not in the former. And, 
 indeed, although we clearly see that we are in- 
 telligent beings only in virtue of the essence of 
 being which stands before our minds, still, we find 
 it impossible to believe that the essence of being 
 is ourselves or forms part of ourselves. It is, 
 therefore, a form different from us. That which 
 imparts to our spirits the act of intelligence is 
 something very different from us, notwithstanding 
 that it is in us or present to us. But this is not 
 enough. Even if we accept this signification of 
 the word, it can be applied to ideal being only in 
 a sense altogether peculiar and different from that
 
 94 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 which we adopt when we say of two real beings, 
 which act reciprocally on each other, that the one 
 is the form of the other. We must, therefore, 
 carefully observe that the mode in which the 
 essence of being becomes the form of our spirits 
 has no resemblance whatever to the mode in 
 which one real being, through action and reaction, 
 becomes the form of another. The essence of 
 being becomes the form of our spirits simply and 
 solely by making us know, by revealing to us 
 its own natural cognizability. Hence there is no 
 reaction on the part of our spirits. These are 
 simply receptive, and the light, the knowledge, 
 which they receive is what renders them intel- 
 ligent. The essence of being is simple, unalter- 
 able, incapable of being modified or confounded 
 or mixed with anything else. In this way it 
 reveals itself, and it can reveal itself in no other. 
 The spirit which intuites it, no less than the act 
 of intuition, stands outside of it. When the mind 
 Object :m^ intuites it, it does not intuite itself. For this 
 andTheir reason the essence of being receives the name 
 re ation. ^^ object, meaning that which is placed before the 
 Kant's intuiting mind, or subject. It will thus be seen 
 
 objective, that, when we say that ideal being is the form of 
 jectit^. the mind, we use the word form in a sense alto- 
 
 gether different from, and opposed to, that in 
 which Kant uses it, all Kant's forms being sub- 
 jective, whereas our one form is objective, and 
 objective in its very essence. 
 
 In regard to the meaning of the word form, Rosmini 
 says elsewhere, " It seems that Kant took the word form
 
 FORM OF COGNITION. 95 
 
 in a material sense, drawing his concept from the form of 
 bodies. By form we mean a perfecting principle, as the 
 ancient philosophers did. Moreover, in our case, it is the 
 ideal object which informs the mind.* Those, therefore, 
 who have charged us with taking one of Kant's forms as 
 the basis of our system, have not understood that the form 
 of which we speak differs essentially from all Kant's forms, 
 as object differs {xom. stLbject and extra-subject" {Theodicy, 
 vol. i. § 151, n.).t " It is being which, as object, draws our 
 spirits to that essential act which is called intellect, and 
 which renders them capable of seeing this being afterwards, 
 in relation with the particular modes of sensation supplied 
 to it — a capability which is called reason. In a word, the 
 idea of being, united to our spirits, is that which forms our 
 intellect and our reason. It is this that renders us intelli- 
 gent beings, rational animals " {Neiu Essay, vol. ii. § 482). 
 It follows from this that the peculiarity of mind lies in 
 having its form as object. Being is, of course, the first and 
 essential form of everything ; but it is the object of mind 
 alone. In other words, consciousness is the power which 
 certain beings have of separating the universal form from 
 their matter, and holding it up, so to speak, as an object. 
 The being of a table is not its object. 
 
 " By the form of cognition" says Rosmini, " we mean 
 that element whereby cognition is cognition, whereby every- 
 thing cognized is cognized. . . . Moreover, this element 
 must be known through itself, and not through some other 
 means rendering it known. , . . Therefore, it must be 
 known immediately, per se. Now, in every one of our 
 cognitions, nothing is known, unless existence be known, 
 because any known thing is simply a thing whose (possible) 
 being and whose determinations are known. But not one 
 of these determinations is known, unless its possible ex- 
 istence is known. To know these determinations is to know 
 
 * Cf. St. Thomas: "Id quo aliquid operatur, oportet esse formam ejus. 
 Nihil enim agit nisi secundum quod est actu. Acta autem non est aliquid, 
 nisi per id quod est forma ejus " {Snmma contra Gentes, ii. 59). 
 
 t In spite of this, Mamiani still insists that Rosmini's being is subjective, 
 one of Kant's forms {Prolegomeni, p. 114, etc.).
 
 96 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 them as existing in their possibility. Therefore, every 
 knowing is a knowing of, at least, possible existence, and 
 every known is known because its possible existence is 
 known. Therefore, ideal or possible existence, or the idea 
 of existence, which is the same thing, is the form of all 
 cognitions. . . . The matter of cognition is the determina- 
 tions of existence, ideal, real, or moral. Matter here means 
 what is known and does not make known, that which 
 requires something else in order to be known, that in which 
 cognition ends as its term. Hence, although everything, 
 even a determination of existence, is known because its 
 possible existence is known, yet pure existence is not the 
 thing known, but only the form of cognition. Thus the 
 mind finds this distinction, which separates in cognition 
 the pure form of knowing from the matter" {Theosophy, 
 vol. iv. § 123). In answer to the question. How can the 
 same thing, that is, ideal being, be at once the form of 
 cognition and of the power of cognition, that is, of the in- 
 tellect.^ Rosmini says, "Ideal being has two relations. . . . 
 that is, it is at once manifesting and manifested. As mani- 
 festing, it is called the form of the mind, because without it 
 the mind would not be mind. . . . As manifested, it is 
 called the form of cognition, because it constitutes the cog- 
 nized object, what there is of objective and, therefore, of 
 formal in every cognition. Hence . . . ideal being may be 
 called the immediate cause of the form of ifttellect, as w^ell as 
 thdlform itself" {Ibid., § 124). 
 
 Rosmini's system was so much a reaction against 
 Kantianism, and its objective fundamental principle so much 
 the result of a refutation of Kant's twelve subjective cate- 
 gories, that it will be worth while to quote that refutation. 
 Kant's categories are presented in the following table : — 
 
 "Transcendental Table of the Concepts of the 
 Understanding. 
 
 " I. According to Quantity. 
 Unity (Measure), 
 Multiplicity (Magnitude), 
 Totality (Wholeness).
 
 KANrS CATEGORIES. 97 
 
 " 2. According to Quality. 
 
 Reality, 
 
 Negation, 
 
 Limitation. 
 " 3. According to Relation. 
 
 Substance and accident, 
 
 Cause and effect, 
 
 Community of passion and action. 
 "4. Kzcox^Xw^ to Modality. 
 
 Possibility — Impossibility, 
 
 Existence — Non-existence, 
 
 Necessity — Chance," * 
 
 "I do notpurpose," says Rosmini, "to enter here into a 
 minut e examination of the Kantian forms. Although Kant 
 has promised rigorously to deduce the categories from the 
 various forms of judgment (which is certainly a very happy 
 thought), he has not kept his word ; for, as far as I can 
 remember, he nowhere undertakes to demonstrate that from 
 the forms of the judgment there result categories amount- 
 ing to the exact number of twelve, and assignable in triads, 
 with perfect distributive regularity, to each of the four 
 fundamental forms. Having thus failed to justify the sym- 
 metrical deduction of the categories, he left it a matter of 
 doubt, no less than did Aristotle, whom he justly censures, 
 whether or not these are perfectly deduced and enumerated, 
 that is, whether they are the only twelve categories of 
 human knowledge, so that there remains nothing that could 
 not be classed under one or other of them. For this reason 
 it would be tedious and out of place here to enter into a 
 minute criticism of this division of the most universal ideas 
 of the human understanding — a division which is certainly 
 no less arbitrary than those made in ancient times. So 
 much is visible at a first glance, that he sometimes con- 
 founds the dress which our ideas receive from the different 
 views taken by the mind and from speech with the ideas 
 themselves, and then he picks up and classifies one idea as 
 several, when he finds it in a variety of garbs. This, to be 
 
 * See Kritik der rein. Vern. and Prolegomena, pt. ii. § 2X. 
 
 H
 
 98 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 sure, helps to perfect the symmetrical regularity of his 
 division, as when he finds under the form of quality the 
 subdivision infinite judgments, which are not in any way 
 different from affirmative or negative 'yxAgvaovAs,, except in 
 their garb of expression. In the same way, he seems to 
 omit certain ideas which determine the classes of human 
 knowledge, and which might have been placed among the 
 categories, merely for fear that these might increase beyond 
 the appointed number, and destroy his favourite regularity. 
 Thus, continuons and extensive quantity might have been 
 ranged under the category of quantity, whereas he places 
 under it only discrete quantity, as being the one which 
 supplies him with exactly the three desired classes — unity, 
 multiplicity, and totality. . . . 
 
 " Let us now examine the twelve categories which Kant 
 calls the forms of our understanding, and the two forms of 
 the inner and outer sense, and let us see whether all these 
 are really primitive and original forms of our intelligence, 
 as the critical philosopher pretends. I observe, in the first 
 place, that Kant's twelve categories cannot all aspire to the 
 same dignity. They are not independent of each other, or 
 confined to distinct genera, in such a way that they cannot 
 be reduced or ranged under each other as smaller classes 
 under greater. Let us take the form of modality. It has 
 the three subordinate categories, possibility, existence, and 
 necessity. Now, let us compare with this form the other 
 three, viz., quantity, quality, and relation. I can conceive, 
 with the utmost ease, a possible or existent being, without 
 being obliged to know what quantity, quality, or relation it 
 has. My understanding, in this case, is conditioned by the 
 law that it is obliged to think such a being either as 
 possible, or as existent, or as necessary ; but it is not obliged, 
 after that, to clothe this being with the forms of quantity, 
 quality, and relation. If, therefore, there can be an act of 
 the intelligence which does not require the three forms, 
 quantity, quality, and relation, this means that these are not 
 essential or necessary forms ; they are not those forms which 
 inform and constitute the peculiar nature of the intellectual 
 operation, and hence they are not the forms we are looking
 
 KANTS CATEGORIES. 99 
 
 for, inasmuch as we are looking for those through which 
 the understanding is understanding, and by which the 
 intellectual operation exists — in a word, the forms that 
 constitute the immediate, essential, and necessary term of 
 the intellectual act. For this reason, the form of modality 
 is independent of quantity, quality, and relation, so that the 
 understanding, with merely the form of modality, can, 
 without these others, perform certain of its acts. On the 
 contrary, we cannot think the quantity, the quality, or the 
 relations of a being, without first having thought it either 
 as possible or as existent. Hence the three forms, quantity, 
 quality, and relation, depend upon the form of modality, 
 which is superior to these, and is the necessary prior con- 
 dition of their having a place in thought. We may, there- 
 fore, without hesitation, conclude that Kant's three primi- 
 tive forms, quantity, qitality, and relation, cannot be con- 
 sidered as original and essential forms of the understanding, 
 inasmuch as its existence and operation can be conceived 
 without them. The same may be seen from another point 
 of view. Is it necessary that every being should have a 
 determinate quantity and quality f To affirm this absolutely, 
 as Kant does, is at least to commit an act of audacity and 
 temerity, more than dogmatic, on the critical reason, and to 
 attribute to it a power of deciding in this way a question 
 which it is impossible to settle a priori. If Kant had said 
 to us, ' To say that every possible being must be furnished 
 with a determinate quantity and quality, is to go beyond 
 the powers of reason, because, in order to say this, we 
 should have to examine all possible beings, and even enter 
 into investigations concerning the Infinite Being, whereof 
 we have no positive or adequate idea,' he would, at least, 
 have shown a little philosophic modesty, real, or, at all 
 events, apparent ; he would have shown some consistency, 
 since there is nothing that gives him greater satisfaction or 
 pleasure than to be able to criticize reason, and to inveigh 
 against those philosophers whom he contemptuously calls 
 dogmatists, that is, against all those who, in their simplicity, 
 admit something as certain. By pronouncing a decided 
 judgment in the matter in question, by placing quantity
 
 loo PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 and quality among the primitive forms of the human under- 
 standing, just as if it could not think anything without 
 these, he has plainly laid himself open to the charge of 
 rashness. . . . We may conclude, therefore, that, if among 
 the forms of Kant there is to be found any one that 
 deserves the title of an ot'iginal form of the human under- 
 standing, as informing it and informing the cognition that 
 proceeds from the intellect, it must be looked for under 
 modality. Let us see, therefore, whether there is under it 
 anything like what we are looking for. 
 
 " In the first place, I observe that, when I think and 
 judge that something exists, I do not necessarily, in that 
 act, complete my idea of the existing thing. And, indeed, 
 I may have an idea, as perfect and determinate as can be 
 desired, although the being which corresponds to it do not 
 really exist. Hence, to judge that the thing of which I 
 have the idea exists, is an act essentially different from 
 that whereby my intellect has and contemplates the idea. 
 This judgment adds nothing new to my idea, no new notion 
 informs my mind through that idea. Hence real or external 
 existence, the term of my judgment, cannot be any original 
 form of my understanding, since in my understanding 
 there is nothing but the idea of the thing, and this neither 
 increases, diminishes, nor undergoes any alteration on 
 account of the subsistence or non-subsistence of the thing 
 in question. The form of the intellect must, therefore, be 
 an idea, and not the subsistence of the thing ; hence, of the 
 three categories of possibility, existence, and necessity, that 
 of existence, considered as a thing apart from the other 
 two, cannot in any way be an original and essential form 
 of our understanding. Let us see, then, whether the other 
 two forms, possibility and necessity, have the character of 
 original and essential forms. 
 
 " The idea of anything (in so far as it is not self-con- 
 tradictory) is what is called the logical possibility of it. 
 Now, it is clearly impossible to perform any act of the 
 understanding without the form oi possibility. But when 
 I think the possibility of a thing, am I also obliged to 
 think explicitly the absolute necessity of the same } No,
 
 RANTS CATEGORIES. loi 
 
 not if we mean to refer this necessity to the thing thought, 
 and not to the possibihty itself, in which latter case it is 
 not distinguishable from the possibility itself, being a mere 
 abstract quality of it. Necessity^ therefore, cannot be an 
 original and primitive form of my understanding, inasmuch 
 as it is not its universal and immutable object and term. 
 We are obliged, therefore, to conclude that, of all the 
 twelve forms of Kant, only one, viz., possibility, has the 
 characteristics of a form of the human intellect. Let us, 
 therefore, examine this possibility a little. 
 
 " We have said that the possibility of which we speak 
 is the idea of anything. Indeed, possibility must always 
 be thought as possibility of something, since we cannot 
 think the possibility of nothing. Possibility, therefore, is 
 inseparable from something, while, at the same time, it 
 may be found united to any something. In order, there- 
 fore, that we may think possibility, it is not necessary that 
 this something should be determined as to genus, species, 
 or individual. It is sufficient that it be something, a being 
 perfectly indeterminate. The idea (the possibility), there- 
 fore, of indeterminate being is the only original and 
 essential form of the human intellect. 
 
 " Now, let us see how all the nine prime forms of Kant 
 reduce themselves to this one as their formal principle, 
 and how the other two categories of modality, existence and 
 necessity, have nothing formal about them, and are elements 
 already contained in possibility. Let us begin with these 
 latter. 
 
 " If by existence is meant the idea of the existence of 
 things in general, it is already included in the idea of 
 indeterminate being. If by existence is meant the actual 
 subsistence of being, this is not the term of the faculty of 
 judgment, and does not add any form to the intellect. 
 Necessity is found by analyzing possibility, inasmuch as 
 that which is possible is necessarily so. In this sense, 
 necessity also is included in the idea of being in general. 
 On the other hand, if by necessity is meant a necessary real 
 being, we must repeat concerning this what was said 
 universally concerning the actual subsistence of beings.
 
 I02 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 " Having thus reduced the three categories of modality 
 to the single form of idea of being in general, let us next 
 see how the three forms comprised under the head of 
 relation, that is, substance, cause, and action, may be re- 
 duced to this same form. I have already shown that the 
 only intellectual element in the ideas of substance and 
 cause is the idea of existence and of being in general [see 
 under §§ 93-101]. If, therefore, Kant placed substance and 
 cause among the essential categories or forms of the human 
 intellect, he did so only because he did not carry out the 
 analysis of these far enough to discover what in them was 
 pure form. With regard to action, we must observe that 
 not only the understanding perceives action, but that sense 
 also perceives it in its own way, by feeling it. Now, we 
 cannot put among the categories particular action, in so 
 far as it is perceived by sense, but only action as conceived 
 by the intellect, or, which is the same thing, the concept 
 of action. But how does it happen that the particular 
 action perceived by sense becomes universal, when it is 
 made the object of the intellect .'' It happens through the 
 faculty which the intellect has of considering the par- 
 ticular action experienced by the sense as possible to be 
 repeated an indefinite number of times. It is, therefore, 
 the addition oi possibility that renders the action a universal 
 concept. The same is true when I consider what constitutes 
 the nature of action in general, and leave out of view the 
 particulars of the different species of action. The concept, 
 therefore, of action, when subjected to analysis, turns out 
 not to be entirely a pure form of the intellect, but to be 
 composed, (i) of a material element, in so far as it relates 
 to the actions experienced by our sense ; and (2) of a formal 
 element, in so far as our intellect adds the form of possi- 
 bility, and thus abstracts and universalizes the particular 
 actions. Hence all that is formal in the idea of action 
 is possibility, or the idea of universal being. 
 
 " By a similar analysis we might reduce Kant's quantity 
 and quality to the form of being in general, that is, by 
 separating from them their material elements and retaining 
 only that which is formal. But this analysis brings us to
 
 KANrS CATEGORIES. 103 
 
 the final result, that these concepts have nothing formal 
 about them but the idea of possibility, or, which is the 
 same thing-, of universal being. And, indeed, even the 
 term of my sense has a certain quantity and a certain 
 quality. Now, the quantity or the quality perceived by my 
 sense is not, in the smallest degree, the form of my 
 intellect. The quantity, therefore, and the qiidity, which 
 are concepts, and, according to Kant, also forms of my 
 intellect, are not particular quantity and quality, but 
 quantity and quality universally considered. Now, to 
 repeat what was said above with regard to action, how 
 do we arrive at quantity and quality in general .-' When 
 I perceive a particular quantity, and then think it as purely 
 possible, with this and nothing more I think it as universal. 
 But if from the possible idea or quantity I abstract the 
 specifying characteristics, and thereby generalize it, I have 
 in it quantity in general. Neither quantity, therefore, nor 
 quality is the object of my intellect in the sense of being 
 its form ; but in order to become such, each requires to be 
 informed by another form, and the form which my intellect 
 unites to it for this purpose is none other than possibility. 
 Qimntity and quality are, therefore, in themselves, matter, 
 and it is my intellect that, by informing them, renders 
 them its concepts. These concepts, therefore, of quantity 
 and quality, when analyzed, have nothing formal about 
 them except the idea of possibility or of being in general. 
 Thus Kant's twelve forms reduce themselves to one pure 
 and true form. 
 
 " And here it is not necessary to speak of what Kant 
 calls the forms of the outer and inner sense, that is, space 
 and time, because these do not belong to the order of 
 intellectual things. The only question would be with 
 reference to their concepts. All that is formal in such 
 concepts limits itself, for the reasons given above, to 
 possibility, or the idea of indeterminate being. 
 
 " But there is another difference to be marked between 
 the nature of Kant's manifold forms and the nature of that 
 one which has remained in our hands after we have scat- 
 tered all the rest. And this difference is, that the whole of
 
 104 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Kant's forms proceed from the basis of the subject, and are 
 therefore subjective, whereas the true form is, in its essence, 
 object. This diversity of nature is of infinite importance, 
 as we shall see. . . . Let us conclude. The human mind 
 has innate no determinate form ; and Kant's seventeen 
 forms have no real foundation, and are entirely superfluous 
 for the explanation of the origin of ideas. On the other 
 hand, the human mind has one single ijideterminate form, 
 and this is the idea of universal being. The idea of being 
 in general is pure form, and has no material element com- 
 bined with it. It is not subjective, but, on the contrary, 
 object. It is so simple and so little that it cannot be 
 further simplified, and nothing less can be imagined that 
 would be capable of informing our cognitions. At the 
 same time, it is of infinite fecundity. And, indeed, it is 
 impossible to imagine any act of the mind that does not 
 require this form, or is not natured and informed by it. 
 Hence if we take away the idea of being, human knowledge 
 and the mind itself are rendered impossible " {New Essay, 
 vol. i. §§ 368-371, 374-384)- 
 
 By Kant's seventeen forms, Rosmini means the two forms 
 of sensibility, the twelve categories of the understanding, 
 and the three postulates of the pure reason. Rosmini has 
 certainly found the primal categories of being in its three 
 necessary modes — ideality, reality, and morality ; but he has 
 nowhere, so far as I know, shown the relation of these to 
 the categories of Aristotle and Kant. He has, indeed, told 
 us that quantity and quality come under reality (§ 27) ; but 
 where he would place relation, etc., it would be as interest- 
 ing to know as it is disappointing that he has not in- 
 formed us. His work on the History of the Categories is 
 unpublished. 
 
 The author of an excellent essay upon Kant's theory of 
 cognition says, " The modal definitions are the summary 
 canon of every theory of cognition. They exhibit the 
 result which the investigation has brought to our scientific 
 consciousness. They describe the whole field of experience. 
 When we know what possible, actual, and necessary mean, 
 we know also what knowledge we may possess and what
 
 KANTS CATEGORIES. 105 
 
 we are to look for. They are also the sole basis from which 
 practical philosophy may make legitimate demands. Every 
 attack on critical idealism will have to be judged by the 
 success with which it overthrows the modal definitions of 
 that system and replaces them by others." The definitions 
 in question, according to this author, are as follows : — " In 
 nature, that is necessary whose existence is demanded by 
 the principles of the theory of cognition." " Acttcal'is, that 
 which is felt or must necessarily be supposed capable of 
 being felt." "Possible is that which corresponds to the 
 conditions of conception {Vorstellung)^ Of necessity he 
 says, " Necessity is not an accident which we recognize in 
 the substance, but the quality of the function of unity in 
 the subject in regard to a given object." * It is easy to see 
 that, according to these definitions, the ground of necessity 
 and possibility, as well of actuality, lies in the subject, 
 whence it follows directly that all our knowledge is subjec- 
 tive. Rosmini has not only attacked, but overthrown, the 
 first and last of the definitions, by showing that the ground 
 of necessity and possibility lies, not in the subject at all, 
 but in the object, which is being. Possibility and necessity, 
 in so far as possibility is not an expression of subjective 
 ignorance due to want of objective data, mean exactly the 
 same thing, and are both based upon the principle of con- 
 tradiction, which again is grounded in the nature of being. 
 Possible is that which ideally is, or, stated in the form of a 
 reflection, that which logically does not contradict itself. 
 But what does not logically contradict itself is ideally neces- 
 sary. If A may be B, A must be B. If three straight 
 lines placed in a certain position, may form a triangle, it 
 follows that, when so placed, they must form a triangle. 
 In other words, so long as we deal only with the ideal or 
 objective world, possible and necessary are exactly the 
 same thing, and both identical Avith actuality. When we 
 pass into the real or subjective world, on the contrary, the 
 words are used with this difference of meaning, that the 
 former expresses partial ignorance, the latter complete 
 
 * August Stadler, Die Grundsdtze der reinen Erkenntnisstheorie in der 
 Kantischen Philosophie (Leipzig, 1876), pp. 130-132.
 
 io6 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 knowledge. When I say, "A may be B," all I mean is that 
 my partial notion of A contains nothing incompatible with 
 the idea B ; but that, if my knowledge of A were com- 
 plete, I should be able to say with certainty, "A must be B" 
 or "A cannot" (we do not say ''must not") " be B." Aris- 
 totle, with his doctrine of potentiality and actuality, placed 
 possibility and necessity in things, that is, in real subjects, 
 thereby introducing much confusion into one part of logic. 
 Kant increased this confusion when he placed them in the 
 thinking subject, as subjective conditions of thinking. The 
 truth is, both lie in the nature of being, which, as such, is 
 always object and never subject. What is meant by real 
 possibility occurs when one condition of a total actuality 
 is conceived as subsistent, and the rest as merely ideal, A 
 proposition is then formed in which the condition conceived 
 as subsistent is made the subject, the total actuality the 
 predicate, and the remaining ideal conditions are vaguely 
 expressed in the copula, e.g. " An acorn may be " {i.e. with 
 certain ideal conditions made actual, is) " an oak." When 
 we say, "An acorn is potentially an oak," we are saying what 
 is not true. When w^e say, " An acorn is a possible oak," 
 w^e are talking nonsense. A possible oak never grew from 
 an acorn — indeed, never grew at all. (Cf Lange, Logische 
 StudieUy pp. 30, sqq.) 
 
 36. 
 
 All intciii- The essence of being, therefore, simply by 
 
 feducibie making itself coQ-nizable to the mind, informs it 
 
 b°eii4"as"^ and renders It Intelligent. In other words, Inas- 
 
 TcertSn" much as every act of Intelligence has entity for its 
 
 manner, object, thls produces the faculty of Intelligence. 
 
 mnUs" ^^ intelligence is reducible to the Intuition of the 
 
 essences of beings, and to the thought of being 
 
 (whose essence Is known) realized in certain 
 
 modes, with certain limits (§ 14).
 
 FORM OF MIND. 107 
 
 The relation of the essence of being to the subject can- 
 not be easily conceived, and Rosmini cannot characterize 
 it otherwise than by saying that it is a relation of objectivity 
 or cognizability. And this is not to be wondered at, for it 
 is most evident that the relation of subject and object 
 involved in cognition is one altogether peculiar and not to 
 be expressed in terms of any other. The most that can be 
 done is to bring it out into clearness and to define the 
 elements that enter into it. It is manifest enough that, if 
 one thing can make itself an object to another, it thereby 
 of necessity makes that other intelligent. It is not so clear 
 how an essence in its very nature infinite can be the form 
 of a finite thing, such as every intelligent being recognizes 
 himself to be. To this Rosmini replies as follows : — " Every 
 one of us knows that he is finite, and when he says /, he is 
 well aware that he is affirming a reality which excludes 
 numerous other realities of the same or of a different order, 
 and, therefore, that he is affirming a finite thing. At the 
 same time, the human soul, in so far as it is intellective, is 
 united to infinite being, namely, the idea, and, under this 
 aspect, it partakes of a certain infinitude. Indeed, ideal 
 being, in its relation to the mind, is like an infinite space, all 
 equally illuminated, in relation to the eye. Hence, although 
 the real things cognized by man are always finite, because 
 the real thing which perceives them, viz., the soul, is finite ; 
 yet the means of cognizing the real things perceived by the 
 sense, that is, the idea of being, is never exhausted or ren- 
 dered inefficacious. . . . Now, here a difficulty presents 
 itself Ideal being is the form of the intellective soul ; but 
 form and matter are two elements constitutive of one nature : 
 hence ideal being is a true constitutive element of the soul. 
 But ideal being, as ideal, is infinite : therefore the human 
 soul is composed of finite and infinite. I reply as follows, 
 by distinguishing the minor premise of this syllogism : — 
 Forms are of two kinds, subjective and objective. Subjec- 
 tive forms belong to the subject and constitute it ; objective 
 forms neither belong to the subject nor constitute it,* but 
 bring the subject into act, and, therefore, may be called 
 
 * Being, of course, constitutes the subject an ego. Cf. under § 124.
 
 loS 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 the immediate causes of the form of the subject. At the 
 same time, they may with equal propriety be called forms, 
 when they are considered as the term of the act of intuition, 
 since universal being, in so far as it is merely the term of 
 this act, is, as it were, appropriated to the soul, without 
 thereby ceasing to be universal in itself. And, indeed, 
 although it is true that being in general is intuited as iden- 
 tical by all intellects, yet in so far as it is merely the term 
 of one intellect, it is not the term of another, and it is in 
 this sense that the truth possessed by man may be said to 
 be created. Indeed, the proposition, ' The truth of the 
 human intellect is created,' is equivalent to this other, ' The 
 truth, which is eternal, has been made to become the term 
 of a created intellect' " {Psychology, vol. i. §§ 236-238). 
 
 In what 
 
 sense ideal 
 being is 
 said to be 
 possible. 
 
 Z1' 
 
 The essence of belnof we have called ideal 
 being ; its realizations, real beings. If ideal being 
 be considered with reference to its realizations, it 
 may be called possible being. The w^ord possible 
 does not designate a quality of being, but merely 
 expresses th-e fact that it may be realized. This 
 must be carefully borne in mind, in order to 
 preclude the notion which might arise, that the 
 essence of being is itself a mere possibility, and 
 nothing more. It is a true essence, not a possi- 
 bility of essence. But this essence may be 
 realized ; if it is not realized, its realization is 
 possible. This is what we mean by possible 
 being. 
 
 As we have seen, Rosmini identifies the two terms ideal 
 and possible, and in this he is right, from his point of view. 
 Ideal being means being as form ; but form, with reference
 
 POSSIBLE AND IDEAL. 109 
 
 to realities, is a mere possibility. Hence ideal d.\\6. possible 
 both express the same relation of being to its terms or 
 realizations. " Being," he says, " is in itself, and possibility 
 is only a relation to reality, that is, to terms, whose 
 nature is not known until they are perceived " {TheosopJiy, 
 vol. i. § ZS). As to the fact that ideal being is not nothing, 
 see citation under § 18. It seems a flat contradiction 
 when Rosmini says, on the one hand, that being ' is in 
 itself,' and, on the other, that apart from a subject it would 
 not be (see under § 34) : but this is only apparent ; for it 
 must be rem.embered that, in Rosmini's language, to be in 
 itself means to be as object, and certainly nothing can be as 
 object when there is no subject. 
 
 " Possible, in the logical sense, means free from contra- 
 diction. Now, being admits no contradiction " {Psychology, 
 vol. ii. § 1340). 
 
 38. 
 Since real beings are many, and each of them Howpos- 
 
 , 1 . -Ill' Mil' ^i^l^ ^""^ 
 
 has a relation to possible being, possible being, ideal 
 
 . 1 , , • , . , . , beins;s are 
 
 considered merely in relation to the various real said to be 
 or realizable beings, becomes their idea, or, more ^^^^^' 
 correctly, their concept. For this reason we say 
 that concepts, ideas, ideal beings, and possible 
 beings are many, because they are as numerous 
 as the modes in which the essence of beine can be 
 realized. 
 
 Speaking of concrete relations, Rosmini says, " Each 
 of these is in one place, separated from every other, in- 
 communicable to every other ; for example, the pain which 
 I feel in a finger has nothing to do with the pain which 
 another man feels, say, in the same finger, and this on 
 account of the limitations of place and of real subsistence 
 which separate these two sensations. On the contrary, 
 being (essere) or a being {ente), which reveals itself to the
 
 no PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 mind as a mere possibility, is not more in one place than 
 in another.* It may be realized in many places, if it is of 
 a nature to occupy space, and even if it is otherwise, it may 
 be indefinitely multiplied. Suppose the mind contemplate 
 the human body in its possibility : this possible body is 
 always the same, in whatever place it may happen to sub- 
 sist through realization, or to whatever extent it may 
 multiply itself. Real bodies become many ; the concept or 
 idea of the body always remains one. The mind, or, as 
 the case may be, several minds, see it as identical in all 
 the infinite number of human bodies, which they think as 
 subsistent. Hence the nature of real things, to which 
 belong sensations, is opposed to the nature of the simple 
 idea " {New Essay, vol. ii. § 427). 
 
 Ideality a 
 mode of 
 being in- 
 capable of 
 being con- 
 founded 
 with 
 reality. 
 
 Let us now inquire into the relation between 
 ideal beings and real beings. Suppose I am in 
 possession of ideal being ; I know the essence of 
 being, nothing more. I do not know whether the 
 beinof whose essence I know be realized. This 
 is equivalent to saying that I have not yet any 
 feeling, or, at least, that I do not reflect upon my 
 feehng ; for if I made the reflection that I had 
 a feeling, I should at once know a reality. But 
 remove from my mind all knowledge of real 
 being, and suppose that I know merely what 
 being is, without knowing that it is realized, is 
 the object of my mind nothing ? Certainly not. 
 In that case my mind would know nothing, 
 whereas, as a matter of fact, it knows the essence 
 of being. If then the object of my mind is not 
 
 * Porphyry says, " Tct Koff eavra affu/xara, aiiTh t KpelTTOv iravrSs iffri 
 adfiaros Kal rdirov, iravTaxv fCTTiv ov SiaaraTus dAA.' afj.epo!)s " {Sfuic'nt, ii.).
 
 IDEAL AND REAL BELNG. in 
 
 nothing, may it not be that I myself am the object 
 of it ? This also is impossible, for I am a real 
 being, and my mind, in the case supposed, has for 
 its object only ideal being, without any realization. 
 Besides this, I am perfectly aware that I am not 
 the essence of being in general, that the essence 
 of being is the object which I intuite, whereas 
 I am the intuiting subject, and between these two 
 there is opposition : the one is not the other. 
 Since then the ideal being intuited by the mind 
 is neither nothing nor real being, we must admit 
 that there is another mode of being besides the 
 real, and hence that there are necessarily two 
 modes of being, the ideal and the real. More- 
 over, since both, being true modes of being, may 
 be designated by the term existence, to avoid 
 confusion we will agree to call the real mode of 
 being subsistence. 
 
 40. 
 
 It is plain that ideal being stands related to Differ- 
 real being, as design, model, example, type, terms tween 
 which, in the last analysis, imply simply means of [heThtivrs 
 knowing, cognizability of ideal being. Now, ifmeanTo/ 
 real beings are limited and contingent, it is plain ''^^'^* 
 that their reality is distinct from the idea ; for the 
 idea is immutable and unalterable, whereas real 
 beings may either be or not be.
 
 112 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Essence 
 known 
 through 
 idea ; sub- 
 sistence 
 through 
 affirmalion 
 on occa- 
 sion of 
 feeling. 
 
 41. 
 
 Hence the knowledge of the essence of things 
 differs from the knowledge of their subsistence. 
 The former comes through the idea; the latter 
 through affirmation on occasion of a feeling (or 
 of some sign that takes the place of a feeling). 
 But the knowledge of the subsistence of any 
 particular being presupposes a knowledge of the 
 essence of being, at least in general (§14). If a 
 feeling should occur in a being who did not 
 know what being was, this feeling would remain 
 blind and unintelligible, because devoid of the 
 essence which could render it intelligible. The 
 being having it would not affirm a real being, 
 because he would not be able to refer the feeling 
 to the essence, or to say to himself what the 
 feeling was. This is the condition of the lower 
 animals, which, though they have feelings, are 
 without the intuition of being. For this reason 
 they are utterly incapable of interpreting to them- 
 selves their own feelings, or of completing them 
 by saying to themselves that there are real beings. 
 We, on the contrary, having a knowledge of 
 being, as soon as we have a feeling, declare that 
 there is a real being. 
 
 The relation of the ideal to the real may be considered 
 either from an ontological or from a psychological point 
 of view. The former is treated farther on (see §§ 166, sqq.). 
 The latter is the one under consideration in the above 
 three sections, from which it appears that ideal being is 
 different from real being, and serves to make it known.
 
 IDEAL AND REAL. 113 
 
 Analysis of human cognition, according to Rosmini, shows 
 us, ''first, that every contingent thing has two modes of 
 being — one in the mind and one outside of it ; second, that 
 the mode of being which is in the mind is potential 
 (Swa/xn), that the mode which is outside the mind is the 
 act (evipyaia) of the same identical essence that is seen 
 by the mind ; t/iird, that, hence, there is in the mind a 
 perfect sitJiilitude of the thing which is outside of the mind 
 — a similitude such that, though it is not identical with the 
 thing in respect to its act of reality, it does not numerically 
 differ from the thing to which that act belongs, but is its 
 beginning, and constitutes its species and intelligibility ; 
 fourth, that if we consider things (limited and contingent) 
 as separate from mind, they are not only unknown, but 
 even per se unknowable, and their relation to the mind is 
 not in them, but in the mind, as a similitude, which is 
 nothing more or less than their ideal being, a determina- 
 tion of universal being, the fountain of all ideas and of all 
 cognizability, as being that which alone is cognizable in 
 itself; fifth, that limited and contingent things, being only 
 so many acts and terms of the common being intuited by 
 the mind, may be considered separately from that being, 
 in which case they are said to subsist outside of the mind, 
 and are called real things ; sixth, and finally, that even if 
 the reality and ideality of things were identical, which is 
 not the case (the thing alone being identical, not the mode 
 of being), still the thing would never confound itself with 
 the act of the mind nor with the subject that possesses it, 
 because the idea itself is essentially object, distinct from 
 the thinking subject, and opposed to it. Real things, 
 therefore, cannot in any way, without violence done to 
 language, be confounded with ideas; still less can they 
 be confounded with the mind that perceives them, because 
 the separation and real distinction of these three entities 
 is contained in their definition " {Neiv Essay, vol. iii. 
 §§ 1 192, 1 193). "In the idea is seen the essence, not of 
 the ideal, but of being, and being is identical under the 
 ideal and under the real form. Now, the idea is nothing 
 else than being intuited by the mind, in its own proper 
 
 I
 
 114 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEJL 
 
 essence, which is eternal. But this essence at one time 
 contains the realization of being, and then it is infinite 
 being — God, who is not seen [cf. under § 21] ; at another, 
 it does not contain this realization, and then it is ideal 
 being, to which is referred the realization which we learn 
 in feeling. For this reason, the known real thing is merely 
 ideal being realised, so that the object of knowledge results 
 from two elements . . . first, the ideal ; second, the real ; — ■ 
 the latter being, as it were, the complement of the former. 
 The ideal, therefore, is representative, not, indeed, as one 
 real thing is representative of another ; for example, a 
 statue, of a man ; but as the essence of a thing represents 
 the thing realized, which thing is not disjoined from its 
 essence. If it were so disjoined, it would no longer be a 
 complete being. Therefore the essence is the act by which 
 the being is in the ideal world, the realization another act 
 of the same being, whereby it is in the feeling (that is, 
 either feels or is felt) which unites with it in the perceiving 
 mind {spiritd) as its complement. And here it must be 
 borne in mind that existence in the mind does not cancel 
 existence in itself, but, on the contrary, constitutes it " 
 {Psychology, vol. ii. § 1339). 
 
 42. 
 How in But since feeling is a reality distinct from the 
 
 perception i • i i • • i i 
 
 we unite essence which renders it cognizable, we must now 
 
 ideal being . . , , , , , 
 
 with feel- inquire how we are able to put together these two 
 ^"^' elements of the being perceived. In order to 
 
 understand this, we must have recourse to the 
 unity of man, or the simplicity of the hnnian spirit. 
 The ego, that principle which knows what being 
 ^ is, is the same as that which feels in itself the 
 
 action of it (feeling is only an action of being). 
 So long as this action or feeling is kept apart 
 from the knowledge of being, so long it remains
 
 THEORY OF COGNITION. 115 
 
 unknown. But this principle, being entirely simple, 
 though at once intelligent and sentient, is obliged, 
 by reason of this very simplicity, to bring together 
 its feelings and the knowledge of being, and in 
 this way it sees being operating, that is, producing 
 feeling, in itself. It is the same being that, on the 
 one hand, manifests itself to us as knozuable, and 
 on the other, as active, producing feeling. And 
 here let it be observed that all the activity of 
 being is reducible to its entity. It exists in this 
 entity as in its spring. It is active being itself, 
 and, as all being is cognizable, so all its activity 
 is cognizable in it. Therefore, feeling, which is 
 this activity, is cognizable in being. Before being 
 acts, this activity is only potentially cognizable 
 because it exists only potentially. Before being 
 acts in a determinate mode (producing feeling), 
 this mode is potential and not determined as one 
 mode rather than another ; hence its activity, 
 when known only potentially, is indeterminate. 
 For this reason, ideal being is called indeterminate 
 being. 
 
 This section contains the gist of Rosmini's theory of 
 cognition {Erkenntnisstheorie), or, as he calls it, intellective 
 perception. The passages which might be cited in ex- 
 planation of it from his various works, Neiv Essay, Psycho- 
 logy, Logic, ThcosopJiy, etc., are almost innumerable.' The 
 following must here suffice. In regard to the unity of the 
 intelligent and sentient subject, he says, " There remains 
 the last difficulty. . . . How can the sentient principle and 
 the intelligent principle be a single principle in man .'* In 
 order to answer this question, let us revert to our doctrine 
 of substance [see §§ 93-97]. We said that substance is
 
 n6 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 \\\2X. first operative prmciple of a being, the principle whence 
 flow its actions and passions [7ra0i?], and hence its diverse 
 states ; that these actions, passions, and diverse states are 
 virtually contained in that principle, that is to say, in that 
 virtue, activity, or potency of it which is the efficient cause 
 of the being. We said, moreover, that these actions, 
 passions, and states may be conceived as forming different 
 groups, although it may not be demonstrable a priori that 
 every such group is possible, that is, reducible to a first 
 act, a first virtue, a first substantial principle. In order to 
 determine a priori which of these groups could be virtually 
 comprised in a first substantial principle, would require 
 nothing short of a complete knowledge of the intrinsic 
 order of being. The intrinsic order of being, however, is 
 not known immediately by man, but has to be gleaned 
 from observation and experience. Hence, when observation 
 and experience reveal to man the existence of a group of 
 activities united in a single substantial principle, he is 
 justified in concluding that such substantial principle may 
 exist, because ah esse ad posse datiir consecutio. 
 
 "Now, internal observation is what attests to man 
 that he is a single principle, sentient and intelligent at the 
 same time ; for every man can say to himself, ' This I, who 
 feel, am the same I who understand, and if I were not the 
 same, I should not know that I felt, or be able to reason 
 concerning my sensations.' On the other hand, it involves 
 no contradiction to suppose that the sensitive activity 
 should have the same principle as the intellective activity, 
 when we consider that many actions may start from one 
 principle, . . . just as many lines may start from one 
 point. 
 
 " But it must be admitted, nevertheless, that, after all 
 these concessions, there remains a very serious objection to 
 be overcome. We have said that, in order to constitute a 
 sentient principle, we must conceive a primitive term of 
 sense \aiaQTf\T6v\ virtually comprehending all the special 
 actions of feeling that such principle can ever perform ; 
 and in man this primitive and fundamental sensiim is his 
 own body, sensible in space. We have said, moreover, that,
 
 FELT AND UNDERSTOOD ENTITY. 117 
 
 in order to constitute an intelligent principle, there is 
 necessary a first object of intelligence [voJirov], virtually- 
 comprehending all that is ever to be understood, and in 
 man this object of intelligence is universal being. Now, if 
 the sentient principle is constituted by the corporeal felt 
 term, and the intelligent principle by intelligible being, we 
 shall be obliged to say that the corporeal extended and 
 intelligible being are identical, or else that they constitute 
 two different principles and not one. 
 
 " In order to reply to this most grave objection, we 
 must observe that in every felt (term of feeling) there is an 
 entity, because every act, of whatever nature, is an entity. 
 But in felt entity there is altogether wanting the intelligible 
 light, in other words, cognizability, as is seen from the fact 
 that the expression /^/^ entity is not understood entity. To 
 say felt instead of understood, in this case, is to exclude 
 cognizability from feeling. On the other hand, intelligence 
 has for its object understood entity, since the intelligent 
 principle does nothing but understand, and everything that 
 it understands is, of necessity, entity. Hence the term of 
 the sentient principle and that of the intelligent principle 
 are both entity. There is, therefore, identity in their terms. 
 
 "But in what, then, are they distinguished.-' They are 
 distinguished by the difference of the manner in which the 
 same entity adheres to the same principle. The truth is, 
 this entity communicates itself to the sentient principle in 
 its felt mode, which I call also reality and activity, whereas 
 it communicates itself to the intelligent principle in its 
 understood mode, which I call also ideality, intelligibility, 
 cognizability, light, etc. 
 
 " With these explanations, we see clearly how the sen- 
 tient principle and the intelligent principle may compene- 
 trate each other so as to form one and the same principle 
 of operation, inasmuch as both the principles have the same 
 term, although to one of these it adheres in one mode and 
 communicates itself in one form, while to the other it 
 adheres in another mode and communicates itself in 
 another form. There are two principles, therefore, if we 
 consider thtform in which the entity communicates itself;
 
 ii8 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 there is only one, if we consider the entity itself which is 
 communicated, apart from its forms. We may say that 
 the principles are two, provided we recognize that in man 
 they are not first principles ; but there is above them a 
 first single principle to which they are subordinated and 
 united, which first principle has reference to entity itself, 
 and not to the forms of entity ; and this is the principle 
 which synthesizes, both in the theoretic order, where it 
 manifests itself as reason, and in the practical order, where 
 it appears as will. Hence this intellective principle, in so 
 far as it is superior, is the point from which the two 
 activities, that is, the sensitive and the intellective, start, 
 and is called the rational principle. From what has been 
 said, it appears that the human soul is a single substantial 
 subject. It is a subject, because it is a first principle of 
 action, endowed with feeling, and it is a substance, because 
 this principle is conceived by the mind as existing in itself, 
 and not in another anterior to it in the order of feeling and 
 understanding" {Psychology, vol. i. §§ 174-181). 
 
 From what was said above, under §§ 30,31, it might be 
 inferred that there was no other link between ideal and 
 real being than that formed by the unity of the sentient 
 and intelligent subject that cognizes the one by means 
 of the other. This, however, is very far from being Ros- 
 mini's doctrine. 
 
 " We find," he says, " that although the ideal and real 
 are so very different, nevertheless they have an identical 
 element, viz. being. The same, identical being occurs in 
 both, only under different conditions and different forms. 
 One form under which being presents itself is ideality, 
 or cognizability, or objectivity — terms which mean substan- 
 tially the same thing ; another form in which it appears is 
 reality, sensibility, activity — which are likewise terms sub- 
 stantially meaning the same thing. Thus, while there is a 
 very great difference in the form, there is perfect identity 
 in the content, which is being itself. This, in so far as it 
 is purely cognizable, is ideal ; in so far as it is sensible, it is 
 real. The sensible rendered cognizable, that is, the union 
 of the two, is what produces intellective perception and
 
 ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE. 119 
 
 the cognition of the real" {On the Purposes of the Author, 
 § 60, sub fin?). 
 
 It must be admitted that it is extremely difficult to 
 seize exactly Rosmini's theory of cognition, and of the 
 relation of the individual human subject to the universe of 
 things. From one point of view, it seems as if each man 
 gave being to things, that is, created them ; from another, 
 it seems as if the universe existed independently of all 
 human thought. How these two doctrines can be simul- 
 taneously true, seems a puzzle. In order to solve it, we 
 must distinguish absolute from relative existence, ro ottXwc 
 Civai from TO irpoQ n slvai. The world exists absolutely as 
 subject and object, that is, as real and ideal, independently 
 of any finite intelligence ; but it does not exist for any man 
 until he makes it exist for himself by his own act. Human 
 intelligence is a rendering relative of what was before 
 absolute, and, in this sense, all human knowledge may be 
 said to be relative. It is relative only to the subject. It 
 does not in the least follow from this that it thereby ceases 
 to be'absolute. A man does not cease to be a man because 
 he enters into the relation of husband or father. Indeed, 
 knowledge could not be relative unless it were likewise 
 absolute. The important point is that man, in knowing, 
 does not in any way alter the objects of knowledge. Hence 
 his knowledge, though relative with respect to the subject, 
 is absolute with respect to the object (cf. under §43). 
 
 43- 
 
 The following objection might here be ad- Objection 
 vanced : — " When we affirm a beino^, we make a iiuciiec- 
 judgment. Now, in order to make a judgment, ception a 
 we must know the two terms of the judgment — J'^'S"^^"- 
 the subject and the predicate. But in the case 
 we are supposing, one of the terms, feeling or 
 reality, is not known. Therefore the supposed 
 judgment is impossible." The only effect of this
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Answer : 
 The ob- 
 jection 
 does not 
 touch the 
 fact, but 
 only the 
 propriety 
 of the 
 term. 
 
 objection, when well considered, would be to 
 make us deny the name of judgment to that 
 act whereby we affirm, and, by affirming, know 
 real beings. Now, even if we were to refuse 
 the name of judgment to this affirmation, this 
 would not in any way interfere with the correct- 
 ness of our theory, which rests on observation. 
 Even if we admit that the objection is well taken, 
 it remains always a fact that to know that a 
 being subsists is to make an internal affirmation 
 that that being subsists, and, therefore, in either 
 case our analysis of this affirmation and the 
 consequences derived from it remain unimpeached. 
 Still, in order entirely to satisfy our objectors, 
 let us consider the new question. May the 
 internal affirmation whereby we know that a 
 being subsists be called a judgment ? 
 
 It is here that Rosmini most clearly parts company 
 with Kant. This philosopher, as every one knows, derives 
 his categories from the various forms of judgment as 
 recognized in the formal logic of the Aristotelians. In 
 every one of these, the terms of the judgment, viz., subject 
 and predicate, are recognized as already formed, and the 
 only question is in regard to their relations. As these 
 relations are numerous, Kant drew from them a long list 
 of categories, which he set down as primitive forms of the 
 understanding. Rosmini, setting aside all Kant's judg- 
 ments, as secondary and dependent upon a primitive one, 
 went behind them to that one, and, analyzing it, found 
 that the understanding had but one primitive form, which 
 was objective, whereas all the others were secondary and 
 subjective (cf under § 35). Accordingly, he does not ask, 
 "How is the judgment, 7 -J- 5 = 12, possible?" but "How 
 do we ever manage to think 7 or 5 V (see above, under § 14).
 
 ORDER OF COGNITION. 121 
 
 He shows that all Kant's synthetical judgments a priori 
 are really analytic, and that the only truly synthetic judg- 
 ment a priori is that wherein we predicate being of sensa- 
 tion, or, in other words, form to ourselves the concept of a 
 reality. In order to fqrra this judgment, the only a priori 
 element requisite is the simple notion of being or existence, 
 the essence of objectivity. Rosmini, accordingly, con- 
 cludes that, since no reality can be known until being 
 is predicated of it, being must be manifested to the mind 
 without the necessity of a judgment, and prior to all 
 reality ; in other words, prior to all sense-experience. 
 
 The usually recognized order of cognition, as we find 
 it in all the old logics, as well as most of the more recent 
 ones, is this (cf. New Essay, vol. i. § 227, n.) — 
 
 (i) Simplex Appre- (2) Judicium, (3) Discursus ; 
 
 hensio, 
 
 \{\) Concept {Be- (2) Judgment (3) Inference 
 griff), {Urtheil), {Schluss); 
 
 ,(i) Term, (2) Proposition, (3) Syllogism. 
 
 These three classifications, of which the first is that of 
 Aldrich, the second that of Kant, and the third that 
 of Jevons, are virtually the same. Rosmini, holding that 
 all concepts are results of primitive judgments in which 
 terms of being are simply apprehended, would substitute for 
 this classification the following: — (i) Intuition of being; 
 (2) Judgment, involving perception of the real and con- 
 ception ; (3) Inference.* According to this theory, judg- 
 ment, perception, and conception are only three aspects of 
 the same act. In his very friendly criticism of Reid, 
 speaking of the view which holds that " simple apprehen- 
 sion, or the pure idea of the thing, precedes the judgment 
 respecting its real existence," he says, " On the one hand, 
 it seems as if this proposition must be true ; for how can 
 I judge that a being, of which I have not the idea, exists .-* 
 The idea of being, or simple apprehension, would seem, 
 therefore, when we look at the matter from this side, 
 necessarily to precede the operation of the judgment which 
 
 * Cf. under § 14.
 
 122 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 we make regarding its real existence. But, on the other 
 hand, experience is entirely at variance with such a view, 
 and assures us that we first form the concrete idea of the 
 being really existing, and afterwards draw from it the 
 abstract idea, which is separate from the persuasion of 
 its real existence, and is what is called simple apprehension 
 of the being. And, in fact, do we think a possible horse, 
 without having first perceived some horse with our senses .'' 
 " This knot of the question was not clearly seen either 
 by Reid or by his adversaries, and for this reason each 
 party was able to confute the other, without being able 
 to maintain its own position. Reid confounded two ques- 
 tions in one ; for it is one thing to ask, Can the mind 
 form a judgment of the existence of external things with- 
 out possessing beforehand some universal idea .'' another 
 to inquire, Does the judgment, affirming the existence of 
 external things, require to be preceded by simple appre- 
 hension, or by the ideas of the things themselves .-' The 
 adversaries of Reid answered this second question in the 
 affirmative, and, in doing so, they were wrong. Now Reid, 
 in opposing them, was not content with showing that the 
 judgment afifirming the existence of external things does 
 not require to be preceded by the simple apprehension of 
 the things themselves, which would have been sufficient 
 to overthrow their system ; . . . but he undertook to prove 
 that, prior to all ideas, we form a primitive judgment, 
 which is inexplicable and mysterious. This reply . . . led 
 from the second of the questions above proposed to the 
 first, and decided that the judgment affirming the exist- 
 ence of external things can be made, not only without 
 the ideas of the things themselves, but also without the 
 pre-existence of any universal idea in our minds. Now, 
 it was this gratuitous extension of the original question 
 that hurt Reid. ... In fact, it is sufficiently evident that 
 no judgment can be formed by one who possesses no 
 universal idea, and therefore the proposition which Reid 
 undertook to defend . . . was exaggerated and unten- 
 able. ... It was not easy to find a satisfactory reply to 
 the terrible objection, How can I judge that that of
 
 CRITICISM OF RE ID. 123 
 
 which I have no idea really exists ? In order to answer 
 this objection, there was no other way but this : to ex- 
 cogitate a system in which the object judged possible 
 should be the effect of the judgment itself, that is, in which 
 the object should exist only in virtue of the judgment 
 made with reference to it. All the difficulty, therefore* 
 consisted in finding a judgment which should give existence 
 to its own object, or to the idea of the thing concerning 
 which the judgment was made, or, which is the same thing, 
 should produce in us the specific ideas of things. . . . 
 
 " Now, passing in review all the kinds of judgment 
 which we make with reference to things, we see clearly 
 that, so long as the judgment relates to some quality of 
 the thing, the thing must necessarily exist in our mind 
 previous to the judgment and to the quality which, in that 
 judgment, we attribute to it. When, on the contrary, 
 the judgment relates to the existence of the thing itself, 
 then the thing judged of does not exist in our thought 
 previous to the act of judgment, but in virtue of it, since 
 so long as we do not think the thing as existing — that is, 
 as having an existence either possible or real — it is nothing ; 
 it is not an object of our thought or an idea. The judg- 
 ment, therefore, regarding the existence of things differs 
 from all other judgments in this, that it produces its own 
 objects, and thereby shows that it possesses an energy of 
 its own — a creative energy, so to speak, which deserves the 
 most profound meditation on the part of the philosopher.* 
 This object, which did not exist before the judgment made 
 regarding it, comes into existence in virtue of it, and there- 
 fore, at most, contemporaneously with it. Such judgment, 
 therefore, is a peculiar faculty of our understanding, which 
 thinks a thing as actually existing. . . . 
 
 " Three questions might be asked with regard to this 
 faculty : (i) How does it begin to think a thing as actually 
 existing.' (2) Where docs it obtain the universal idea of 
 
 * Rosmini quotes the following passage to show that St. Thomas held a 
 view similar to this : — " Prima ejus [intellectus] actio per speciem est formatio 
 sui objecti, quo f(jrmato, intelligit : simul tamcn tempore ipse formal et 
 formatum est, et rimul intelligit " (De Natiira Verbi Intellectus).
 
 124 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 existence necessary for such thinking ? and (3) How does 
 it restrict the idea of existence, which is universal, to a 
 determinate thing, and so think this determinate object, 
 rather than that, as existing ? To the first and third of 
 these questions it is easy to reply with the help of experi- 
 ence. We are excited to think an existing object by sensa- 
 tions, and it is likewise these sensations that determine this 
 object existing in our thought. . . . The difficulty, therefore, 
 all consists in knowing whence we derive the idea of exist- 
 ence, which is necessary to the first of all our judgments, 
 to that judgment whereby we know that something external 
 exists. This is the great problem of Ideology" {New 
 Essay, vol. i. §§ 1 21-126). 
 
 It is plain from this passage wherein the great difi"erence 
 between Kantianism and Rosminianism lies. Both Kant and 
 Rosmini proposed to themselves the same question, How 
 are synthetic judgments a priori possible .'' And both 
 answered virtually in the same way : Through the existence 
 in the mind of a form or forms prior to all judgments. 
 Here the parallelism ceases. Kant mistook for synthetic 
 judgments a priori, judgments which are at once analytic 
 and, as far as their terms are concerned, a posteriori. He 
 thus arrived at a series of categories, which had three car- 
 dinal defects: (i) it had no unity or necessary completeness ; 
 (2) it was entirely subjective, and hence could not account 
 for objectivity or for the existence of concepts ; and (3) it 
 gave merely the terms of the judgment, but could not 
 account for the copula. Rosmini, on the contrary, having 
 discovered the only judgment which is really synthetic 
 a priori, arrived, by analyzing it, at a single form, which is 
 at once one and primitive, objective, and, with the aid of 
 sensation, capable of accounting for all parts of the judg- 
 ment (cf. under § 35). 
 
 44. 
 
 Is this 
 
 affirmation \^\'=> plain that, SO long as the two elements of 
 
 min^f the affirmation in question — that is, the essence of
 
 MENTAL SYNTHESIS SPONTANEOUS. 125 
 
 being and the felt activity — are considered sepa- 
 rately, they do not present the elements necessary 
 for the formation of a judgment : hence the objec- 
 tion. But if the objection were valid in this 
 instance, would it not be valid against every 
 judgment equally? In fact, there is not andNojudg- 
 cannot be any judgment whatsoever so long as whatever 
 
 , r 1 • 1 • T-i ^s possible 
 
 the terms 01 the judgment remam separate. i he without 
 
 , .-,,,, the union 
 
 judgment is lormed only when they are put of its 
 together. It is sufficient, therefore, that the two 
 terms be such as will form a judgment when they 
 are united ; and it is of no consequence what they 
 are before union. We must, therefore, examine 
 whether, in the present instance, the terms which 
 before union were incapable of forming a judg- 
 ment become by union thus capable. This is 
 not inconceivable. And it is precisely what hap- 
 pens. But before proving this, let us attend to 
 some other considerations. 
 
 An attentive consideration of the sources of knowledge 
 shows us that not only are its elements given to us, but 
 that they are also combined by nature and independently 
 of our wills or action. Indeed, it is nature that forms all 
 those combinations whose analyses by reflection we call 
 judgments. I cannot say, " This horse is black," until after 
 I have seen, perceived, the horse as black. In the percep- 
 tion the combination of black with horse was already made, 
 and the judgment merely analyzes it. In this sense, all 
 judgments, without exception, are analytic.
 
 126 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 In intel- 
 lective 
 percep- 
 tion, it is 
 not intelli- 
 gence, but 
 nature, 
 that unites 
 the terms 
 of the 
 judgment. 
 
 This judg- 
 ment pro- 
 duces its 
 
 45- 
 
 Why do we say that subject and predicate cannot 
 be united in a judgment unless both are previously 
 known ? Because it is supposed that the principle 
 which brings them into union is the intelligence 
 or the intelligent will, as in the majority of judg- 
 ments ; and it is obvious that the intelligence does 
 not unite two terms without previously knowing 
 them. But migrht it not be that what unites the 
 terms is not the intelligence at all, but nature 
 itself? This is precisely what happens in the case 
 in question ; for the essence of being and the felt 
 activity are brought into union, not by our intel- 
 ligence, but by our nature, as we have said. This 
 union has its origin in the unity of the subject, 
 and in the identity which exists between being as 
 known and being 2Js,felt (active). Now, inasmuch 
 as nature unites these two elements, it remains to 
 be seen whether, by uniting them, it has not ren- 
 dered them capable of becoming the terms of a 
 judgment. In order to make this clear to our- 
 selves, let us take the formula of such a judgment, 
 and, analyzing it into its terms, consider whether 
 these possess the requisite conditions. The for- 
 mula we may express thus : Being (whereof I 
 have knowledge) is realized in this feeling (felt 
 activity). When I make this affirmation within 
 myself, I know real being ; I know what feeling, 
 the felt activity, is ; I know what a being is. The 
 element, therefore, which was unknown to me
 
 KANTS ERROR. 127 
 
 before I made the affirmation, is known to me as own sub- 
 ject. 
 soon as the affirmation is made. Therefore, 
 
 although feeling, before being united with ideal 
 being, was unknown to me, and, therefore, not yet 
 capable of becoming one of the terms of a judg- 
 ment ; yet as soon as nature joined it to ideal 
 being by a spontaneous act of affirmation, it is 
 already known, and therefore capable of being one 
 of the terms of a judgment. If we agree to give 
 the name of subject to feeling or reality, it will be 
 easy at once to comprehend the meaning of the 
 statement which we have several times made, to 
 the effect that this primitive affirmation, this 
 primitive judgment, produces its own subject. 
 
 Kant and his followers committed two great and funda- 
 mental errors : first, in supposing that, before a judgment 
 could be formed, both its terms had to be known ; and, 
 second, in not seeing that the primitive and constitutive 
 form of the understanding must be that which is common 
 to ail judgments. The first led them to overlook the 
 spontaneous judgment of simple apprehension; the second, 
 to destroy the unity of consciousness and abolish true 
 objectivity. Both these errors are corrected in the system 
 of Rosmini, who does full justice to the primitive judg- 
 ment. " The judgment," he says, " respecting the existence 
 of this or that sensibly determined thing, of this body 
 which now falls under my senses, may easily be explained 
 and analyzed in the following manner : — We have a mind 
 {spiritd) at once sensitive and intellective [cf. under §§ 42, 
 122]. . . . Sense is the power of perceiving sensibles ; the 
 understanding is the faculty of perceiving things as exist- 
 ing in themselves. Now, that which falls under our sense 
 becomes the object of our understanding, because WE who 
 feel are the same who possess understanding. When, there- 
 fore, we have perceived sensible qualities, what operation
 
 128 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 will our minds perform upon them ? The understanding 
 consists, as we have said, in the power to see things as 
 existing in themselves [see under § 32]. Therefore, our 
 understanding will perceive the sensibles as existing in 
 themselves, and not in the intimate relation which, as sen- 
 sations, they have with us. Now, to perceive sensibles as 
 existing in themselves, independently of us, is the same 
 thing as to judge them existing in themselves. This, again, 
 is the same thing as judging that there exists outside of us 
 a being in which the sensible qualities are. . . . Let us, then, 
 fix the difference between the two kinds of judgment which 
 we form. Sometimes in our judgments wedo nothing more 
 than think a quality as existing in a being already conceived 
 by us, as when I say, ' This man is blind,' in which case I 
 think blindness as existing in the man of whom I have an 
 idea, and who is the subject of my judgment. At other 
 times, on the contrary, with our judgment, we think a being 
 as adhering to certain sensibles, as when we say, ' There 
 exists a being determined by those sensible qualities which 
 I now perceive with my senses.' In the first kind, the 
 object of the judgment exists before the judgment itself; 
 in the second, the object does not exist before the judg- 
 ment, but only the elements of it ; that is, (i) sensations not 
 yet become cognitions ; (2) the idea of existence which 
 lights up these sensations by adding being to them, and 
 makes them known in and through being. To conclude : 
 Judgment is not always an operation performed on an 
 object already thought, but sometimes an operation per- 
 formed on sensibles which, in the judgment itself, become 
 objects of our thought " {Neiv Essay, vol. i. § 128). 
 
 46. 
 
 The term Plainly, then, the affirmation of a real being 
 
 ck)iTot is entitled to the name of judgment only after 
 
 thrnatoe it is formed, not before. Now, reflection dis- 
 
 ofaffirma- . . , . • i . i_ • ^ j 
 
 tion, but a tmguishes m every judgment a subject and a 
 
 subsequent pj-g^jjcatc ; but, in so doing, it analyzes a judg-
 
 PERCEPTION SPONTANEOUS. 129 
 
 mcnt already formed. That which is not yet reflective 
 
 r 1 1 1 1 T • 1 • 1 • analysis 
 
 formed cannot be analyzed. It is this analysis of it. 
 that supplies the definition of judgment, which 
 runs : A judgment is the logical luiion of a pre- 
 dicate with a subject. This definition is analytical 
 and the product of reflection. The term J2idg- 
 ment, therefore, as applied to an afThrmation, does 
 not designate the affirmation itself, as it is in its 
 origin, but a subsequent reflection, which, by 
 dealing with affirmations according to its own 
 laws of action, changes or analyzes them into 
 judgments. 
 
 This is an extremely important point, and one that is 
 often lost sight of in philosophical and logical discussions. 
 Many people talk as if a judgment were the putting to- 
 gether of two concepts, and then declaring whether they 
 were identical or different. For example, the logic from 
 which I have already quoted lays down that " Judiciiun 
 est quo mens non solum PERCIPIT DUO OBJECTA, sed, 
 quasi pro tribunali sedens, expresse apud se pronuntiat, 
 ilia inter se convenire aut dissedere." The truth is that 
 the judgment is neither the one nor the other of these 
 processes. Perception of two objects is not necessary to 
 a judgment, nor is the afifirmation of agreement or dis- 
 agreement any part of one. When I say, " A is B," this 
 means, not that I have perceived A and B as two objects, 
 but that I have perceived them as one. If I had not, I 
 should never think of making the judgment. When I say 
 " Fire is not water," this means that I have tried to think 
 them as one, and failed. 
 
 47- 
 
 This statement may be rendered clearer if we Reflection, 
 consider that, when reflection analyzes an afhrma- ingajudg- 
 
 K
 
 I30 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 ment, dis- 
 tinguishes, 
 but does 
 not sepa- 
 rate, its 
 elements. 
 
 Subject 
 and pre- 
 dicate do 
 not exist 
 prior to 
 the judg- 
 ment, but 
 are formed 
 in the act 
 of judg- 
 ment. 
 
 tlon into subject and predicate, it does not in 
 reality separate or disunite the two terms. In- 
 deed, if it could do so, both would at once be 
 destroyed. They would at once cease to be sub- 
 ject and predicate, and hence w^ould cease to be 
 elements of a judgment. The judgment would 
 therefore be destroyed. Reflection, indeed, merely 
 distingnishes the two terms notionally, and does 
 not really break up the judgment of which they 
 are the interdependent elements, and through 
 which alone they are subject and predicate. Let 
 us illustrate this by an example. Let us take the 
 judgment : This being which I see is a man. Of 
 what does this judgment inform me '^ That this 
 being which I see is a man. Before I pronounced 
 this judgment, I did not know that this being 
 which I see was a man ; for knowing this and 
 saying it to myself are precisely one and the same 
 thing. Now, let us by reflection analyze this 
 judgment. This being is the subject, and a man 
 is the predicate. It is clear that if I should 
 regard these two terms separately, without paying 
 attention to their relation, I should not know the 
 one as subject and the other as predicate. They 
 would not be terms of a judgment at all. How, 
 then, do they become subject and predicate .-* By 
 means of the judgment itself. Subject and pre- 
 dicate, therefore, do not exist prior to the judg- 
 ment of which they are elements. They are 
 formed in the judgment, and, after they are 
 formed, reflection finds them there. Let us now 
 apply this reasoning to our afiirmation : Being is
 
 DIRECT AND INDIRECT COGNITION. 131 
 
 realized in this feeling, or, The activity of this 
 feeling is a being. Analyzing it, I say that the 
 feeling is the subject and being the predicate, 
 and, in so doing, I simply express what I find 
 in the judgment itself. But, of course, if I take 
 the feeling out of the judgment, and thus destroy 
 the judgment, the feeling ceases to be subject, 
 being altogether unknown to me. The objection 
 advanced, therefore, though plausible, is without 
 foundation, being based upon a false premise, 
 viz., that the subject must exist as subject before 
 the formation of the judgment, whereas the truth 
 is, that it is in all cases the judgment itself that 
 produces it. 
 
 It follows from this that judgment, in its proper and 
 ordinary sense, belongs to Logic, which Rosmini calls 
 " the art of reflection " {Logic, § 69), and not to Ideology. 
 That which enables us to make judgments, namely, the 
 primitive, spontaneous synthesis of being and sensation 
 — in other words, direct cognition — belongs to Ideology, 
 whereas the analysis of that synthesis by reflection — in other 
 words, reflexive cognition — belongs to Logic. " The under- 
 standing," says Rosmini, " forms perceptions and such ideas 
 as are consequent on these, in an instinctive and natural 
 manner, and, for that reason, is not liable to error ; for 
 nature does not err.* But we must now distinguish these 
 involuntary first cognitions from those which come after- 
 wards and are voluntary. The first form direct, the second 
 reflexive, cognition. . . . Direct cognition is purely synthetic, 
 whereas reflexive cognition is also analytic. In reflection 
 we turn back upon what we before perceived directly, 
 analyzing it, decomposing it, considering it in parts, and, 
 after having decomposed it, again rccomposing it according 
 
 * Cf. Aristotle, Phys., viii. l ; 252 a, 12 sq. : "'AAAo fxiiv ouStV 7^ &raKroy 
 Twv (pvan Kal Ka-^a tpvcriv r) yap <pv(ris airia iriiat ra^fuis."
 
 132 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 as we will ; whereas in perception we embrace the whole 
 thing in its entirety, with a simple act and as if it were a 
 simple object. Through this first intellective apprehension 
 we distinguish no particular element of the thing perceived, 
 because the nature of our intelligence is limited by this 
 law, that it requires a plurality of acts to distinguish a 
 plurality of things, and cannot distinguish one thing from 
 another without a negation, which must always be pre- 
 ceded by an affirmation. At first, therefore, we perceive 
 the thing as a whole ; afterwards, by means of reflection, 
 we pass on to analyze it. Considering things in parts 
 brings us new clearness, whereas the first complex per- 
 ception appears to us confused and imperfect.* This is 
 the reason why the latter altogether escapes the notice of 
 those who do not carefully observe how the act of thinking 
 takes place in their own consciousness. . . . Hence re- 
 flexive cognition may be called recognition rather than 
 cognition " {Neiv Essay, vol. iii. §§ 1258, 1259, 1261). 
 
 48. 
 
 Difference The solc dififercnce betvi^een the affirmation 
 
 primitive whereby v^e arrive at a knowledge of real beings 
 
 tionrand and Other judgments consists in this, that in all 
 
 ments!"'^ Other judgments the subject and predicate, though 
 
 not known as subject and predicate before the 
 
 formation of the judgment, are known in other 
 
 ways, whereas the subject feeling is not known 
 
 in any way previous to the affirmation of real 
 
 beine. But this difference does not render the 
 
 * Aristotle expresses this thought very happily in the beginning of his 
 P/iVSics : " AiStt^p avdyKTi rhv Tp6-wov tovtov ivpoaynv iK rwv acracpicrrtpoiv filv 
 77} (pvffii rjjMv Se cracpecTTepwi' ini ra ffa(pe(rTfpa rfj (pixrei ical yvwpifxwrepa, icTTi 5e 
 T)^'iv TTpwTov SfjAa Koi (Tacpri ra arvyKexv/J-eva /xaWov varepoi/ S' (k tovtoiv yli/erai 
 yfcipifxa TO, ffToix^^ct koi at apx"-^ diaipovcri ravra" (Pkys., i. I ; 184 a, 18 sq.). 
 lie also says that "'H fxkv oZv twv aSiaiperuv v6ricns iv tovtois -rrepl & ovk sitti 
 TO \i/(vSos" {De At!., iii. 6, i ; 430 a, 26 sq.) ; but crvyK^x^h'-^va and aSiaipera 
 are not synonymous.
 
 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENT. 133 
 
 primitive judgment different in nature from other 
 judgments, since in other judgments the know- 
 ledge which we have of what afterwards becomes 
 the subject is not what produces the knowledge 
 which we obtain through the judgment. The two, 
 indeed, are utterly independent. Let us show 
 this by an example. When I judge that the 
 being which I see is a man, what knowledge does 
 this judgment bring me ? That the being which 
 I see is a man. Before I make the judgment, 
 therefore, I am entirely unaware that the being 
 which I see is a man. The being which I see 
 I do not recognize as a man : I know it only as 
 a being seen. Now, the mere knowledge of it 
 as something seen has nothing to do with my 
 knowledge of it as a man. I might, indeed, know 
 it for thousands of years as something seen, with- 
 out knowing that it was a man, and this would 
 actually happen if I had no knowledge of man. 
 The being, therefore, which I see, although 
 known under one aspect, is, before the judgment, 
 altogether unknown to me in its relation to the 
 predicate man. Hence, in all judgments without 
 distinction, the subject as such — that is, in its re- 
 lation to the predicate — is unknown before the 
 formation of the judgment. The effect of every 
 judgment is to make known what was previously 
 unknown, and, therefore, the subject of every 
 judgment is, as subject, an unknown which has to 
 make itself known. 
 
 But, in the affirmation of real beings, the The nature 
 
 " of tlie 
 
 knowledge to be acquired is first knowledge, r>'miiive
 
 134 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 jiKigment before which there can be no other. In this 
 illustrated. case, therefore, before the formation of the judg- 
 ment, the subject is unknown, not only in its 
 relation to the predicate, but in every respect. 
 Indeed, if it were known in any way, it would no 
 longer be true that the knowledge of real beings 
 which we acquire through affirmation was the 
 first real knowledge, since we should previously 
 have some knowledge of what afterwards becomes 
 the subject. If, then, every judgment produces 
 in us knowledge which we did not previously pos- 
 sess, and if one piece of knowledge is based upon 
 another, in such a way that, if we descend the 
 scale, we must come to a first knowledge, which 
 can be no other than the affirmation of existence, 
 it follows of necessity — 
 
 (i) That the subject of every judgment is 
 unknown as subject, that is, in its relation to the 
 predicate, previous to the formation of the judg- 
 ment. 
 
 (2) That, although, before the formation of the 
 judgment, the subject may be unknown as such, 
 yet something else may be known about it. 
 
 (3) That this something which is known about 
 it must have been known through a previous 
 judgment. 
 
 (4) That, going back in this way to the first 
 judgment of all, we shall have to admit a subject 
 which, previous to that judgment, was not known 
 at all, for the simple reason that there was no 
 previous judgment through which a knowledge of 
 it could have been obtained.
 
 SUBJECT AXD CONCEPT OF SUBJECT. 135 
 
 {5) That the first of all judgments is that by 
 which we know that something real exists, since 
 whatever we know of any real being presupposes 
 that we know it to exist. 
 
 (6) That, therefore, the first affirmation must 
 form a subject, which, by a law common to all 
 judgments, was previously unknown. 
 
 " The act of understanding or conceiving intellectually 
 a corporeal being consists in seeing the relation between 
 the particular agent perceived by the senses and the uni- 
 versal idea of existence. It does not consist in our placing 
 in, or uniting to, the being in question our own idea (in this 
 case, existence), but in simply conceiving, through the uni<"y 
 of our inmost sense, the relation which it has with our idea 
 of existence. Perceiving a relation is not confounding or 
 mixing the two terms of the relation together into one 
 thing. This kind of union would be material. ... In this 
 sen.^e I call the primitive judgment of our spirits, that 
 which gives birth to intellective perception, synthetic and 
 a priori, because in it there is formed a spiritual union 
 between a thing given by the senses, which becomes sub- 
 ject, and one which does not enter into the subject and is 
 not given by the senses, but is formed only in the intellect 
 and is the predicate. Be it observed, I say that this pre- 
 dicate does not exist in the subject supplied by the senses 
 \ro ai(yQ\]TQv\ and I do not say, as Kant does, that it 
 does not exist in the concept of the subject. Indeed, the 
 predicate certainly exists in the concept of the subject ; 
 for what is the concept of the subject, when it is formed, 
 but the sensible subject with the intelligible predicate 
 already applied to it .-• To say, therefore, that the predicate 
 does not exist in the concept of the subject, is something 
 entirely different from saying that the predicate docs not 
 exist in the subject. The former is Kant's expression, and 
 is erroneous and equivocal : it is the latter alone that I 
 admit and recognize as accurate. In one word, the sub- 
 jects of our judgments arc either supplied solely by the
 
 136 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 senses, or are already conceived by the intellect. In the 
 latter case we have already the concept of the subject of our 
 judgment. In the former case we have, in a certain mode, 
 the subject itself of the judgment, that is, we have poten- 
 tially that which will become the subject when the judg- 
 ment is formed ; but we have not the concept of it. Only 
 when we unite the predicate to the subject, and so form the 
 judgment, do we obtain, by means of the judgment itself, 
 the concept of this subject. And these are the primitive 
 judgments^ which constitute our perceptions of real beings, 
 from which again we derive concepts, or determinate ideas. 
 . . . The judgments, therefore, whereby we form the con- 
 cepts or ideas of things are primitive, that is, they are the 
 first that we form respecting these things ; they are syn- 
 thetic, because we add to the subject something which is 
 not in it, or, more correctly, we consider the subject in 
 relation to something outside of it, that is, to an idea of 
 our intellect ; and they may also fairly be called a priori, 
 inasmuch as, though the matter of them has to be supplied 
 by the senses, we find the form of them only in our 
 intellect ; and in these synthetic judgments a priori consists 
 the problem of Ideology, the first in philosophy " {N'ew 
 Essaj, vol. i. §§ 359, 360). 
 
 49. 
 Theprmii- In view of this peculiarity of the afifirmation 
 
 tive judg- •' 
 
 ment may of real being's, we have g-iven to this iudement 
 
 also be .... J t> 
 
 called the the name of primitive synthesis, and to that faculty 
 
 primitive ... 
 
 synthesis. of the huHian Spirit v^hich forms it, the name of 
 reason, which is that one power of the mind which 
 brings into union being and feeling, and afterwards 
 exercises reflection upon the result. 
 
 " The primitive synthesis, which already contains imi- 
 vcrsaliaation, although still bound up with a foreign 
 clement, is not deliberate ; it is performed, or at least
 
 INTELLECT AXD REASON. 137 
 
 aided, by nature, which has put together in man a vigilant 
 understanding, an open eye, as it were, to see all that takes 
 place before it, an eye which sees being essentially. Hence 
 it is not very difficult to understand that, given sensations, 
 the process of primitive synthesis is performed by the mind 
 spontaneously. . . . On the contrary, since abstraction 
 belongs to reflection, which is a voluntary faculty, and one 
 not self-moved, it is always man himself who, by his will, 
 causes this movement " {Nezv Essay, vol. ii. § 513). " The 
 intellective faculties are reducible to two principal ones, 
 the intellect and the reason. The acts of the intellect be- 
 long purely to nature. Those presided over by art must 
 be counted among the acts of the reason. . . . The general 
 faculty of applying being is called reason. . , . We must 
 distinguish two principal functions of reason. Reason, in 
 so far as it applies to feeling the idea of being, exercises 
 the function which is called perception. Reason, in so far as 
 it applies the idea of being to objects already thought, 
 exercises the function called reflection'' {Logic, §§ 64, Gy, 69). 
 
 50. 
 
 We have said that, in the primitive synthesis, Converti- 
 the feeling may be considered as the subject, andtheu;mas 
 being as the predicate. Nevertheless, we might, piimUive 
 with equal propriety, call the essence of being the ■*"' ^"^^'^ * 
 subject, and its realization the predicate. The 
 reason of this convertibility of subject and pre- 
 dicate in the primitive synthesis is, that it is an 
 identical judgment (§§ 23-28), expressing an equa- 
 tion between feeling and the essence of being 
 through the idea (the cognizability of the latter). 
 
 This statement must be accepted with considerable 
 caution. It is by no means indifferent whether I sa}', 
 Freezing is or Being freezes. The former expression, if un-
 
 138 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 usual, is, at least, sense, while the latter is nonsense, as well 
 as at variance with Rosmini's central doctrine. What he 
 means is, that, in perception, being adheres or is present to 
 sensation, as much as sensation to being. This shows how 
 much superior the ancient mode of expressing judgments 
 was to the modern ; for I can say with equal propriety and 
 truth, " TfP) TTi'iyvvaOai vircip^ei to mmi" or " Tw dvai vTra(>\H 
 TO TD'iyvvaOai." With our modern way of expressing judg- 
 ments, w^e arc continually exposed to the risk of being led 
 to imagine that one reality can be predicated of another, as 
 has been the case with all thinkers who have quantified the 
 predicate. Although the predicate of every logical pro- 
 position is an idea, while the subject may or may not be so, 
 still, subject and predicate may exchange places, so long as 
 we express their relation by a word expressive of relation 
 {vTrdp\ti), and not by a word expressive of independent 
 existence, is (tor/). 
 
 5T. 
 
 Solution of W^ have thus, then, explained the meaning of 
 
 biom'of reason, light of reason, form wJiich renders the 
 
 orideas'" mind intelligejit, faculty of knowing. We have 
 also solved the question concerning the origin of 
 ideas. There Is one primitive Idea, that of being. 
 By means of It the primitive judgments are formed, 
 and real beings, as felt, are affirmed and thus 
 known. The relations between the Idea of belnof 
 and real beings are the concepts or specific ideas of 
 particular beings. These Ideas form the matter of 
 analysis, reflection, abstraction, etc. — processes 
 which produce the various abstract entities of 
 reason. 
 
 The phrases, ligJit of reason, light of the intellect, intel- 
 lectual light, which play so important a part in the language
 
 LIGHT OF REASON. 139 
 
 of the Schoolmen and others, may all be traced back to a 
 metaphorical expression used by Aristotle in the fifth 
 chapter of the third book of his De Anima. It is used to 
 give a notion of the nature of the formative or creative 
 moment in the separate or self-subsistent intelligence. 
 This history of this metaphor, which gave occasion to the 
 formative intellect {yovq TroirjTiKog) of the later Aristo- 
 telians, and the active intellect {intdlectiis agens) of the 
 Arabs and Schoolmen, is one of the most interesting and 
 curious in the whole development of philosophic ter- 
 minology. As to the meaning of active intellect in the 
 language of St. Bonaventura and St. Thomas, see Cardinal 
 Zigliara's large work, Delia Luce Intellettuale e deW Onto- 
 logismo (Rome, 1874) ; the excellent little treatise of Sebas- 
 tian Casara, La Ljice dell' OccJiio Corporeo e quel la delT 
 Litelletto (Farahlago, 1879) ; and the recent work, // Lwne 
 deir Litelletto (Loescher, Turin, Rome, Florence, 1881). 
 
 52. 
 
 Those who wish to pursue further the question cf. Nr.v 
 concerning the deduction of special and general iS'-a" 
 Ideas or concepts, and of all human knowledge, rkUosophy. 
 may consult the author's New Essay on the Origin 
 of Ideas and Restoration of P hilosophy in Italy. 
 In these works will be found the development and 
 application of the Ideological theory here set forth. 
 
 See especially Neiv Essay, vol. ii. §§ 474-557, and Re- 
 storation, pp. 593-636. Having thus shown that cognition 
 presupposes three elements : (i) the universal idea of being, 
 present to the intellect ; (2) sensation, and, (3) the synthesis 
 of the one with the other by reason ; he now proceeds to 
 consider the subsequent analysis, whereby we become con- 
 scious of the elements of this synthesis through a further 
 act of the reason, which we call judgment. The primitive 
 synthesis, being made by nature, which does not err, is
 
 I40 nilLOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 always correct ; the subsequent analysis, on the contrary, 
 being made by the thinking subject itself, is liable to be 
 false as well as true. In order that it may always be true, 
 certain rules and principles, forming together what may be 
 called the art of reasoning, are necessary. The science of 
 this art is Logic, which, therefore, forms the link between 
 Ideology and Metaphysics, drawing its principle and cri- 
 terion of truth from the former, and laying down the rules 
 whereby truth may be reached in the latter. As Rosmini 
 says, " Logic is the doctrine of the intellectual light con- 
 sidered as the principle and guide of reason " {Logic, § 8 ; 
 cf, below, under § 70). 
 
 2. Logic. 
 
 53. 
 
 Logic. Logic is the science of the art of reasoning.* 
 
 Rosmini elsewhere defines Logic as " the science of the 
 art of reflecting," or " the science of the art of directing the 
 reflection." " From this definition," he says, " we see why 
 other sciences akin to logic have frequently been con- 
 founded with it. Some persons, deceived by the etymology 
 of the word, have believed that logic ought to treat of reason 
 [X070C] under all its aspects. But the doctrine concerning 
 the nature of reason, in the subjective sense — that is, as 
 principle and power of reasoning — belongs to Psychology, 
 which is the first part of Metaphysics. On the other hand, 
 the doctrine concerning the nature of reason, in the objec- 
 tive sense — that is, as the objects in which the acts of the 
 faculty terminate — belongs to Ideology and to Theosophy, 
 which is the second part of Mctapliysics. Logic, therefore, 
 must be limited to the consideration of the exercise of 
 reason, and especially to the art of that exercise, whereby 
 reasonings are conducted in the best manner and to the best 
 
 * Rosmini has left an admirable treatise on Logic, perhaps the very best 
 that exists, in spite of certain conchisions \\hicli do not belong to the sphere of 
 pure philosophy (see Bihliografhy).
 
 HEGEUS LOGIC. 141 
 
 rational end" {Logic, §§ 71, 72). Reflection, as distin- 
 guished from perception, which is limited to the object 
 perceived, is defined by Rosmini as a " turning back of the 
 attention upon the things perceived." " Hence," he says, 
 " it is not limited to the object of a single perception, but 
 may diffuse itself over several perceptions at once, and form 
 to itself an object out of several objects and their relations. 
 . . . Reflection, therefore, may be called a general perception, 
 that is, a perception of several perceptions " {Neiv Essay, 
 vol. ii. § 487). 
 
 Rosmini defends the old Aristotelian logic against the 
 attack made upon it by Hegel, and utterly rejects what the 
 latter chooses to call logic. " Of the rejection of the syl- 
 logism," he says, " and the contempt poured upon the 
 rigorous language of Aristotle, what was the necessary 
 result ? The abolition of human reason, . . . and this was 
 really accomplished in the philosophy of Germany from 
 Kant to Hegel" {Logic, § 25). "Kant sets to work and 
 commands the human spirit to produce the logical forms, 
 but stops short before the material reality. Fichte shouts 
 * Forward ! ' and commands it to produce matter likewise. 
 Schelling next arrives, and, observing that the producer 
 still remains distinct from the product, and therefore un- 
 produced, seeks to push on the philosophical revolution 
 still farther, by issuing a decree that the human spirit, by 
 an intuition, shall identify its own productions with itself, 
 and calling the result the System of Absolute Identity. In 
 this way, the spirit, which, after having produced all things 
 from itself, sees their identity with itself, has identified the 
 subject with the object, and thus, according to Schelling, 
 has found the Absolute. 
 
 " But Hegel next ascends the throne, and finds this 
 philosophy still too slow and old fashioned. According to 
 him, the fecundity of the human spirit is not yet exhausted 
 or carried to the last conceivable point. Schclling's in- 
 tuition leaves subsisting a distinction between the subject 
 and object of intuition, and therefore the subject is not yet 
 completely identified with the object. Hegel, therefore, in 
 his lofty fancy, imagines that the human spirit, the producer
 
 142 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 of all things, by dint of putting forth, puts forth itself, 
 finally exhausting- and annulling itself in its own product, 
 like a sack, which, by being gradually folded down, finally 
 becomes the sack turned inside out. And lo! ' the absolute 
 idea ' is found. These philosophers, especially the last, did 
 not fail to acquire a great deal of celebrity as great dialec- 
 ticians. We question the permanency of this celebrity. . . . 
 
 " These remarks suffice to show that the period of dia- 
 lectic thought unfolds itself into three kinds of philosophy : 
 first, the philosophies which openly profess scepticism ; 
 second, the philosophies which, like that of Kant, declare 
 that they profess neither dogmatism nor scepticism, pre- 
 tending that there is a middle system ; and, tJiird, the 
 philosophies which return to dogmatism, believing erro- 
 neously that they have found absolute thought. Such are 
 the philosophies of Kant's three successors, Fichte, Schel- 
 ling, and Hegel. 
 
 " These are their pretensions and magnificent promises. 
 Nevertheless, the sceptic alone expresses himself with 
 sincerity. In fact, all these three kinds of philosophy 
 belong to dialectic thought and never get outside of it. 
 They are three phases, three results, of critical philosophy. 
 The first is characterized by despair of finding the truth. 
 The second tries to remedy this unfortunate state of things 
 through faith in practical reason floating in mid air, without 
 any theoretic foundation. The third is distinguished by 
 philosophic pride, which, feeling everything vanish from its 
 grasp, invites humanity to a show, in which it promises to 
 take all out of nothhig, before the eyes of its public, which 
 it warns to be very attentive, just like those prestidigitators 
 who, from under an empty dice-box, bring a large, various- 
 coloured ball, four times as big as the box itself" {Logic 
 
 §§ 40-43)- 
 
 " But let us examine this transformation of logic 
 
 The transformation in question involves, in the first place, 
 the entire overthrow of ancient logic. Logic, according to 
 Hegel, is the science of the idea in itself, of the pure idea.* 
 Its object is ' the absolute form of truth, and the pure truth 
 
 * "Die Logikisldie Wis^enschaft acr reinai Idee'" {Encyclop., pt. i. § 19).
 
 HEGEL'S LOGIC. 143 
 
 itself.' * To understand this new definition, we must bear 
 in mind that Hegel's point of departure is ' thought as the 
 object of thought.' f This object, which is thought itself, 
 as object, moves, and, moving, performs three acts. With 
 the first it produces the absolute idea as such, rising from 
 the last abstraction to the concrete idea, as he calls it, which 
 virtually contains all existences. Its second act is a con- 
 tinuation of the first. It is the concrete idea developing 
 itself, going out of itself, positing itself as another, and 
 becoming nature. When this idea has become nature, the 
 third act begins. The idea returns to itself, as a perfect 
 consciousness of that which is in itself, and then it recog- 
 nizes itself as spirit. To these three developments the 
 whole of Hegel's philosophy reduces itself. The first is 
 the subject of Logic; the s^icond, of the Science of Nature ; 
 and the third, of the Science of Spirit — precisely the three 
 parts of philosophy. And here we see the position that 
 Logic holds in the philosophical Encyclopaedia of Hegel. 
 It is the movement which thought, as the object of thought, 
 goes through, and by which it succeeds in constituting itself 
 as concept or absolute idea. 
 
 " But even this first movement has three parts. There is 
 a movement or process in the sphere of being, a movement 
 or process in the sphere of essence, and a movement or 
 process in the sphere of the concept. The movement in the 
 sphere of being is a passing over into another ; the move- 
 ment in the sphere of essence is a reflection or manifestation 
 in another ; the movement in the sphere of the concept is 
 a development, by which alone is posited that which already 
 is in itself or in potentiality, as a plant that unfolds from 
 the germ in which it was contained.^ This triple movement 
 or process returns eternally into itself, begins every instant, 
 and every instant completes itself. The description of this 
 eternal movement is the logic which Hcgcl tries to substi- 
 
 * Ibid., Zusatz i. ; cf. § 24, Zusatze ii., iii. 
 
 f " Fiir den Anfang den die Philosophic zu machen hat scheint sie . . . 
 hier das Dcnkiu zum Gegenstand des Denkens maclien zu miissen " {Ibid. ,§17). 
 
 \ " In der Natur ist es das organische I.cben, wclclics der Slufc (lesT'egridTs 
 entspricht. So entwickelt sicli, /.. I!., die I'llaiize aus ihixin Kciin " (Liuyclo/)., 
 pt. i, § 161, Zusalz).
 
 144 PHILOSOPHTCAL SVSTEAf. 
 
 tute for the vulgar one [g^Pieine], as he calls it, and of 
 which he speaks contemptuously.* 
 
 " Now, in this new logic, what is truth ? ' The agreement 
 of the odj'ect with the concept', \ says Hegel. This agree- 
 ment is found in the absolute idea, which is the last term 
 reached by the concept itself in its development. Hence 
 proceeds this singular consequence that error eternally 
 coexists with truth ; \ for, since our philosopher admits that 
 this triple progress moves in a continuous and eternal 
 circle, and that truth lies only in the last point, in which the 
 circle completes itself, and which is where the concept has 
 become absolute idea, it follows that all the other points of 
 the circle remain in the deficiency which belongs to error — 
 that only a single moment of the circle belongs to truth, 
 whereas all the rest belong to error. Thus, error has a 
 much larger and richer share than truth. Since, moreover, 
 this triple circular and eternal process is necessary, it fol- 
 lows that the perpetual alternation between the dominion 
 of truth, which consists in a point, and that of error, which 
 extends to the whole round of the circle, is also necessary. 
 Hence this philosopher, who desires to be in the highest 
 degree Unitarian, tumbles unawares into the Manichaian 
 system of two principles — 
 
 Insincera acies duo per divortia semper 
 Spargitur, in geminis visum frustrata figuris. 
 
 " To tell the truth, the purpose of this new logic is far 
 more sublime than that of the old one. The old one 
 taught men to make sure of the truth. The new one 
 laughs at such simplicity, and advises man to resign him- 
 self to the acceptance of truth and error as necessary 
 moments of the understanding, which alternate in per- 
 petual motion, without affording any possibility that the 
 truth shall in the end prevail over its contrary. . . . 
 
 * See Encyclop., pt. i. § 19, Zusatz ii. ; § 20, Zusatz. 
 
 t " Dahingegen bestelit die Wahrheit im tieferen Sinu darin, dass die Ob- 
 jektivitiit mit dem Begriff identisch ist " {Encyclop., pt. i. § 213, Zusatz). 
 
 X " Eben so falsch ist die Vorstellung, als ob die Idee nur das Abstrakte sey. 
 Sie ist es allerdings in sofern alles Unwahre sich in ihr aufzehit " {Encyclop., 
 pt. i. § 213).
 
 HEGEL'S LOGIC. 145 
 
 " Hegel elsewhere congratulates himself on having thus 
 discovered how to effect the conciliation of truth with 
 error, and how to make them live at peace with one 
 another. The same may be said with respect to good 
 and evil. . . . The new philosophy assures us that it has 
 the marvellous power to bind together good and evil, as 
 well as truth and falsehood, and from these two contraries 
 to draw forth a third entity — and what entity would one 
 suppose .'' The Absolute Good ! ' The good, the absolute 
 good,' says Hegel, ' eternally accomplishes itself in the 
 world, with the result that it is already accomplished in 
 and for itself, and does not require to wait for us. That 
 it does so wait, is the illusion in which we live, and which 
 is the sole active principle upon which interest in the world 
 rests. The idea, in its process, causes this illusion to itself, 
 sets another over against itself, and its whole action con- 
 sists in cancelling this illusion. Only from this error does 
 truth spring, and herein alone lies the reconciliation with 
 error and finitude. Otherness or error, as cancelled, is 
 itself a necessary moment of truth, which is only in so far 
 as it makes itself its own result.' * 
 
 " Such is the singular fruit of the new logic ! Such 
 are the promises it holds out ! It teaches man to put 
 away from himself the illusion of doing good, or of ex- 
 pecting it in another life, as if the good were still to be 
 accomplished, and were not continually being accomplished 
 in our world, without our concurrence ! It likewise teaches 
 us that it is in vain to seek for truth free from error, 
 because error is the product of truth transforming itself 
 into another, and truth is the product of error transforming 
 itself into truth. If such were the nature of things, we 
 ought to close the eyes of the mind to avoid the error of 
 seeing it. If absolute science were at once the contem- 
 plation and production of this sad spectacle, of this con- 
 tinual, fatal revolution of thought, we ought to congratulate 
 him who does not possess it, and he who does ought to do 
 his best to unlearn it. 
 
 * Encyclopccdie, pt. i. § 212, Zusatz.
 
 146 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 "'The idea is the Absolute, the highest definition of 
 God,' * says Hegel. But this god of Hegel's is a god who 
 continually deludes himself, and whose whole activity 
 consists in constantly dissolving the delusion which he 
 practises upon himself. It is from this delusion, from this 
 error of Hegel's god, that truth proceeds ! A logic which 
 ingenuously confesses to such results would not seem to 
 require any further examination, because, even if it were 
 true, it could be neither good nor desirable ; and, since it 
 cannot be good, it cannot be true. Nevertheless, we will 
 not omit to mark some of the principal errors by which 
 Hegelian reasoning is corrupted to its very roots. f 
 
 "(i) Hegel sets out with a supposition altogether gra- 
 tuitous and at the same time evidently false, viz., that ideas 
 move themselves, that they change and develop them- 
 selves, as the germ of a flower, which develops into the 
 plant. He assures his disciples, who, for the most part, 
 listen in rapture, that all his assertions (and his system is 
 only a series of assertions) are necessarily connected, that 
 which follows with that which precedes ; but no philo- 
 sopher ever made a falser boast. And, in fact, the asser- 
 tion that ideas move is neither deduced from any principle 
 nor supported by even the smallest proof; and internal 
 observation, to which alone our philosopher could appeal, 
 testifies to the contrary. It testifies that ideas are plainly 
 immutable, that man intuites them or does not intuite 
 them, reflects on them or does not reflect on them, thinks 
 them in one mode or another, passes from the considera- 
 tion of one to the consideration of another, and all this 
 without the idea's suffering the least change. Hence, the 
 new logic begins by giving proof of entire ignorance re- 
 specting the nature of ideas — starts with a proposition not 
 only arbitrary, but manifestly erroneous. 
 
 " (2) Hegel, in his Logic, undertakes to trace the whole 
 of this dialectic movement. But his philosophical imagi- 
 
 * "Die Definition des Absoluten, dass es die Idee ist, ist nun selbst 
 absolut" {Encydop., pt. i. § 213 ; cf. § 85). 
 
 t Cf. Trendelenburg, Logische UntersucJmngen, vol. i. p. 38 (3rd edit.), 
 and Die logische Frage in HegePs System, pp. 12 sqq., and my translation of 
 the same in ih.t younial of Speculative Philosophy, vols, v., vi.
 
 HEGEL'S LOGIC. 147 
 
 nation is so strong that the steps which he makes thought 
 take, far from appearing necessary, are arbitrary and 
 capricious. Let us open the Science of Logic. Its point 
 of departure, as we have already said, is 'thought as the 
 object of thought.' This must develop itself, and it is 
 Logic that describes and performs this development. And 
 lo ! the Logic of Hegel, all of a sudden, and without even 
 the smallest hint of a reason, divides itself into three parts 
 — the Theory of Being, the Theoiy of Essence, and the 
 Theory of Concept and Idea.* It, therefore, begins at 
 once by describing the movement of being. But was not 
 the original undertaking to describe the development of 
 thought as the object of thought } How, then, has being, 
 so suddenly and without any warning to the reader, been 
 substituted for thought as the object of thought ? Is it 
 not plain that the philosopher is here entertaining his 
 disciples with nimble sleights of hand .'' By this trick he 
 makes them swallow the implicit proposition that thought 
 as the object of thought is identical with being. It follows, 
 of course, that, since they are identical, they may be inter- 
 changed at pleasure, without its being necessary to prove 
 this supposed identity. Thus, the famous Science of Logic 
 begins by suddenly putting being in the place of tJdnking. 
 The philosopher starts with a petitio principii, and violently 
 introduces into the very first lines the whole system 
 which he ought to demonstrate. Assuming, therefore, from 
 the beginning the truth of the whole system, and taking 
 its germ and principle for granted, he affords a first and 
 solemn example of the new art of reasoning, which cer- 
 tainly stands entirely opposed to the old. 
 
 " (3) But, at least, the inferences which follow will be 
 furnished with that dialectic necessity which makes so 
 much display, and to which appeal is made as to the sole 
 and only proof of the system. ' Think ! ' After having in 
 the very beginning exchanged thought for being in our 
 
 * Hegel excuses himself for this, on the ground that, preliminarily, no 
 deduction of these can be given (see Encydop., pt. i. § 20) ; but, as he has not 
 shown why this deduction is impossible, and, if it is impossible, his pro- 
 positions are pure assumptions, his excuse goes for nothing, and, indeed, is a 
 mere apology for simple incapacity.
 
 148 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 hands, Hegel begins to tell us that ' being is the concept,' * 
 the indeterminate. Here, again, without favouring us with 
 any proof, he demands, or rather commands, that we shall 
 thus blindly believe that being is the concept ; and so the 
 rigorous dialectic process, which he had promised us, is 
 reduced to a substitution of one word for another, to an 
 arbitrary and absurd metamorphosis. Who, that has not 
 lost his head, will ever grant to him that being, thus gene- 
 rally, is the concept? On the contrary, everybody will 
 tell him it is by the concept that being is known, and for 
 that very reason the one is not the other. If he meant to 
 speak of ideal being, he ought to have said so, since cer- 
 tainly ideal being, as intuited by the mind, though not 
 properly a concept, is, nevertheless, the idea ; but being, 
 without distinction of form, is neither an idea nor a con- 
 cept. He adds ' the indeterminate.' But is the indeter- 
 minate the same thing as being .'' Certainly not ; and as 
 little is the indeterminate the same as the concept. And 
 if you assert that it is, you assert something that nobody 
 will grant. On the contrary, being is essentially deter- 
 mined, and when it is undetermined, it is so much the less 
 being. In a word, the indeterminate signifies only a pri- 
 vation, which is characteristic of ideal being. 
 
 " (4) But, if you mean to speak not of being simply, but 
 of indeterminate being, again, why not say so } Why dis- 
 semble after the manner of sophists who deal in equivo- 
 cations .'' If this is what you mean, then you ought to 
 account for the idea of indeterminate being, and show us 
 its origin. If you had done so, you would not have begun 
 your logic thus with a leap into indeterminate being, but 
 with something else, which might have led you to an 
 explanation of the idea of indeterminate being. According 
 to us, not the indeterminate simply, but indeterminate 
 being is the light of reason, the form of the intelligence, 
 and it is only after having rigorously demonstrated it that 
 
 * " Das Seyn is der Begriflf nur an skh, die Bestimmungen desselben sind 
 seyende, in ihrem Unterscliiede ^;/a';'^ gegeneinander, und ihre weitere Bestim- 
 mung (die Form des Dialektischen) ist ein Ucbergehen in Anderes " (Encyclop., 
 vol. i. § 84).
 
 HEGEVS LOGIC. 
 
 149 
 
 we assumed the right of asserting that here is the point of 
 departure of the human spirit, distinguishing this from the 
 point of departure of man in his first development, as well 
 as from that of the man who begins to philosophize, and 
 that of philosophy as science.* 
 
 " (5) ' Being,' says Hegel, ' has three forms — quality, 
 quantity, and measure, or qualitative quantity.' Of this, 
 again, there is no proof, and, indeed, there could be no 
 proof of an error so patent. He has been speaking of 
 indeterminate being, and now he tells us that it has quality, 
 quantity, and measure.f What a leap ! Indeterminate 
 being has certainly not one of these, for these are deter- 
 minations, and when being has them, it is no longer 
 indeterminate. Here again, in the usual fashion, the sub- 
 ject of the discourse is surreptitiously changed. 
 
 " (6) But let us see what he says of quality. ' Pure 
 being,' he says, ' forms the beginning, because it is at once 
 pure thought, and the indeterminate, simple immediate.' | 
 What a number of things at once ! How many assertions 
 in a few words ! He has been speaking of being, and now 
 he enters the field with a slight change, pure being. Once 
 more pure being and thought are identified, without one 
 word to tell us why. And yet all men distinguish, and 
 always will distinguish, thought, which is the act of the 
 intelligent subject, from being, which is its object, and in 
 no manner will they confound two things so different and 
 so much opposed to each other. He says, again, that this 
 pure being is the immediate; but immediate is an adjective, 
 and requires a substantive, and he who can may guess 
 what that substantive is. But without stopping to consider 
 this, let us ask on what grounds he affirms that pure being 
 is the immediate. We must believe it blindly, because he 
 says so : this is the usual intimation that our philosopher 
 
 * See under § 9. 
 
 t " Eine jede Sphare der logischen Idee erweist sich als eine Totalitat von 
 Bestimmungen und als eine Darstellung des Absolulen. So audi das Seyn, 
 welches die drei Stufen der Qualitat, der Quantitat und es Maasses in sich 
 enthalt" {Encydop., pt. i. §85, Zusatz). 
 
 \ "Das reine Seyn macht den Anfang, weil es sowohl reiner Gedanke als 
 das unbeslimmte, einfache Unmittellmre ist " {Ibid., § 86).
 
 I50 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 gives us. He immediately subjoins that 'pure being is 
 pure abstraction, and therefore the absokite negative, 
 which, when similarly taken in its immediacy, is Nothing.' * 
 But if pure being is an abstraction, how is it immediate } 
 Rather the abstraction is immediate, and pure being, 
 obtained through the medium of it, is mediate. And from 
 what is this abstraction made.? That from which the 
 abstraction is made must be anterior to the abstraction, 
 and therefore more immediate than it, as well as than the 
 abstract which it produces. 
 
 " (7) But attention here to another poetic metamor- 
 phosis ! Pure being, which is said to be an abstraction, is 
 directly afterwards a pitrc abstraction, which becomes 
 synonymous with the absolute negative. And when this 
 substitution of words is accomplished, without further 
 ceremony the assertion is made that the absolute negative, 
 taken in its immediacy, is nothing, which is defined as 
 abstraction and absolute negation. These sudden tran- 
 sitions pretend to be, in the highest degree, dialectical 
 by rigorous necessity ! But to speak more seriously ; men 
 will not be so easily persuaded that indeterminate being is 
 nothing, inasmuch as indeterminate being is, after all, an 
 object of thought ; nor will they admit that calling nothing 
 abstraction and absolute negation is a proper way to speak, 
 since abstraction and negation are operations of thought, 
 whereas nothing, though indeed the result of total negation, 
 which removes all object from thought, is not the negation 
 itself. But why should indeterminate being be nothing } 
 Our philosopher never feels himself bound to give us any 
 reasons ; but a reason may be gathered from what he tells 
 us, viz., that it has in it no reality. Men of good sense, 
 however, will find an induction of this sort illogical and 
 antidialectical, inasmuch as indeterminate being is still 
 something, although it is devoid of real form and deter- 
 mination, for the simple reason that it is being. It is ideal 
 and formal being ; it is being that virtually has within it 
 
 * " Dieses reine Seyn ist nun die reine Abstraction, damit das absohit 
 negative, welches, gleichfallsunmittclbargenommcn, das Nichts ist " {Ibid., § 87)
 
 HEGEL'S LOGIC. 151 
 
 all determinations. It is the intelligibility of all deter- 
 minate beings, and therefore can never identify itself 
 with nothing. This, again, instead of being a dialectically 
 necessary step, is a desperado's leap in the dark, since 
 being is always that which directly contradicts nothing. 
 
 " (8) Hegel, having thus, by his usual method of sub- 
 stituting one word for another, defined being in this way — 
 that is, by calling it nothing — takes other steps, not a whit 
 more dialectical than the preceding, but merely verbal ; for 
 example : ' Nothing, as this immediate, self-equal, is, in its 
 turn, the same that being is. The truth of being, as 
 well as of nothing, is the unity of the two : this unity is 
 BECOMING.' * And this is the principle and characteristic 
 of the whole Hegelian philosophy. In it, everything is 
 always becoming, the idea being, according to Hegel, 
 essentially movement. Nevertheless, it is impossible to 
 conceive any movement in the idea, movement and change 
 being contradictory of the eternal and immutable nature of 
 the idea. And this observation alone is sufficient to over- 
 throw the whole imaginary edifice. But let us examine 
 the last words. After having told us that indeterminate 
 being is nothing, Hegel pretends that this consequence 
 follows : ' The truth of being, as well as that of nothing, is 
 the unity of the two.' But let him tell us clearly, and 
 without equivocation, whether being and nothing be one or 
 two ; because if they are two, there is no longer a perfect 
 identity between them, and if they are one, there is no need 
 for uniting them. The truth is that they are neither one, 
 since it is impossible that being should ever become 
 nothing, nor, on the other hand, are they two, except with 
 respect to our minds, which, with two diff"erent operations, 
 posit and remove being ; and these two operations can 
 never be united into one, inasmuch as our minds can never, 
 at the same time and in the same respect, affirm and 
 
 * " Das Nichts ist als dieses unmittelbare, sich selbstgleiche, ebenso umge- 
 kehrt dasselbe was das Seyn ist. Die Wahrheit des Seyns, sowie des Nichts, 
 ist daher die Einheit beider: diese Einheit ist das Werden" (Ibid., §88). 
 Here and elsewhere I translate directly from the third edition of the Ency- 
 clopccdic, which diffcis somewhat from the first, from which Rosmini trans- 
 lated.
 
 152 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 negate being. For this reason, the logic which Hegel calls 
 vulgar is perfectly right in admitting the principle of 
 contradiction, and the new dialectician is wrong when he 
 impugns it, in order to enjoy the singular privilege of 
 contradicting himself. It follows that the union or identi- 
 fication of being with nothing is only an absurdity, which 
 cannot be conceived by any intelligence ; and an absurdity 
 is not anything, not even becoming. 
 
 "(9) On the other hand, neither being nor nothing 
 becomes, because being is, and that which is does not 
 become ; and nothing does not become, because it is nothing; 
 for nothing neither does nor suffers anything. For these 
 reasons the concept of becoming is not, and cannot be, 
 either in being, or in nothing, or in their union or identifica- 
 tion. We must, therefore, analyze this concept, and not 
 bring it into the field ready made, without any explanation, 
 and without saying what it is. Without such explanation, 
 becoming remains a mere word, which, not being defined 
 and therefore not clear, is not fit to be used by the dialec- 
 tician, but only by the sophist. And, indeed, first of all, 
 the word becoming may mark either a simple concept, or it 
 may mark a reality. What then, in Hegel's view, is real 
 becoming, and what is the concept of becoming } He takes 
 excellent care not to let this be known, because he is 
 under the absolute necessity of using the word sometimes 
 in the one sense, sometimes in the other — sometimes for the 
 real act [of being], and sometimes for the concept of this 
 act ; and it is only by these ambiguities that he hopes to 
 make us swallow his paradox, that the concept and the 
 reality are all the same thing, and that the real is compre- 
 hended in the ideal. Such a marvellous result he could 
 not reach otherwise than by introducing a word capable of 
 signifying either the one or the other, so as to make us 
 pass from the identity of the word to the identity of the 
 thing. 
 
 " (10) Again, the pretended dialectical transition from 
 indeterminate being to becoming does not exist. In inde- 
 terminate being there is to be found nothing that can 
 become or cause to become, no activity of any kind, but
 
 HEGEUS LOGIC. 153 
 
 only pure intelligibility. Hence even the possibility of the 
 transition is wanting. Instead, therefore, of a transition, 
 through deduction of one thing from another, the whole 
 process is reduced to an arbitrary adding of one thing to 
 another. Now, as you, at your good will and pleasure, join 
 becoming to indeterminate being, so I may join to it any 
 other determination that pleases me, without discovering 
 that I have thereby, with so little trouble, constructed a 
 philosophical system or performed anything beyond a 
 simple and very ordinary exercise of thought. I say, there- 
 fore, that you introduce becoming abruptly, not by a neces- 
 sary transition from one concept to another, but as- one 
 word follows another without nexus. Indeed, becoming 
 presupposes the being which becomes, and therefore being 
 precedes becoming. If so, becoming itself cannot be being, 
 but something that is subsequent to being. Add what we 
 have said above, that ideal being never becomes, and that 
 indeterminate being is merely ideal, since all real beings 
 are determinate. Further, becoming presupposes a force, 
 a force determining a subject to change and to change in a 
 given manner, whence the virtue of becoming, whether 
 active, passive, or intransitive — take it as you choose — must 
 always be a determinate. And even if, in thought, you 
 should form an abstract concept of becoming, and thus 
 should wish not to determine the mode of becoming, this 
 concept, although abstract, would begin to render being less 
 indeterminate, so that, by adding becoming to being, you 
 do not thereby make indeterminate being move. This 
 being necessarily remains before the mind, the same as 
 before, while, from the concept of completely indeterminate 
 being, your mind passes to consider another less indeter- 
 minate concept : that is all. 
 
 "(11) And, after all, you cannot obtain this determina- 
 tion, becoming, except from the real world, as we have said, 
 because it is nowhere else. How have you then jumped 
 out of the ideal world, where you were, into the real one ? 
 How do you account for such a leap .-* Whilst you were 
 discussing indeterminate being, which can only be the 
 object of the mind, how have you managed to drag- into
 
 154 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 the discussion becoming, which is found only among realities, 
 and not even among all these, but only among such as are 
 finite ? Here is another most mortal leap, antilogical and 
 antidialectical, from indeterminate being to finite being. 
 The purely indeterminate concept of being is unlimited, 
 infinite. For the very reason that it is indeterminate, it has 
 no limit of any sort. Becoming, on the contrary (whatever 
 this becoming may be, and we shall see farther on what it 
 is), is a passion lyraBoq, affection] of purely finite being, of 
 which you have not yet spoken, but which you, neverthe- 
 less, take the liberty of smuggling in as a presupposition 
 of your philosophy, while all the time you are proclaiming 
 that no new personage can enter without the passport of 
 necessary dialectic. Your words, therefore, are mere words, 
 and are contradicted by facts. To sum up : you see here 
 three headlong leaps — first, from being to an affection of 
 being, such as becoming is ; second, from ideal being, which 
 is the same as indeterminate being, to real being, in which 
 alone is found the affection of becoming ; third, from 
 infinite being, the indeterminate, to finite being, which 
 alone can be said in a certain way to become, if indeed 
 that word has any meaning. . . . 
 
 "(12) But Hegel further tells us that becoming is pro- 
 perly the identification of being and nothing, because it 
 expresses that point in which one being ceases and the 
 other is not yet begun. If it were true that it expressed 
 this point, it would not therefore be true either that indeter- 
 minate being was the identification of being with nothing, 
 or that this identification was becoming. That indeter- 
 minate being has no reality is true ; but it has identity, and 
 identity is not nothing. And nothing cannot, properly 
 speaking, be united with being, because they are not two 
 things. The being of the world has, indeed, limits ; but 
 the word nothing does not indicate these limits. Nothing 
 is a simple concept indicating total removal or absence of 
 being, whereas the limits are different and have different 
 concepts, being relations of beings differently limited. Let 
 us, however, admit that, by a figure of speech (all such 
 ought, however, to be excluded from rigorously scientific
 
 HEGEL'S LOGIC. 155 
 
 deductions), we may say that indeterminate being is the 
 union of being and nothing, because it contains at once 
 ideal being and the zero of reality. Let it further be 
 admitted, by another figure of speech, that becoming is the 
 union of being and nothing, because, in the act of becoming, 
 we conceive the cessation of one being and the beginning 
 of another. After all this is admitted, it will not follow, in 
 the least, that indeterminate being is becoming, although 
 both may be defined as the union of being and nothing. 
 This definition w^ould not signify the same thing in the two 
 cases. What it would signify when applied to indeterminate 
 being would be something different from its signification as 
 applied to becoming. The union of being and nothing, in 
 the case of indeterminate being, would be a mode of union 
 different from the union of being and nothing in the case 
 of becoming. In indeterminate being there are entirely 
 wanting the concepts of annulment and production : there 
 is nothing but (ideal) being and (real) non-being. In be- 
 coming, on the contrary, there are not simply being and 
 non-being, but annulment and production. Nothing and 
 annulment are two different things. Nothing presupposes 
 nothing, whereas annulment presupposes an agent that 
 annuls and an entity that is annulled. So likewise, being 
 and the production of being are two different things. 
 Being expresses a completed, quiet act ; production ex- 
 presses an uncompleted, unquiet act. We must, therefore, 
 at all events, reform these definitions, figurative though they 
 be, and say that indeterminate being is the union of (ideal) 
 being and (real) nothing, whereas becoming is the union, 
 not the identification, of annulment and production. When 
 the definitions are thus reduced, they have lost their 
 identity. The Hegelian sophism, therefore, comes from 
 having abandoned the ancient logic, which, if our philo- 
 sopher had studied it, would have taught him to begin his 
 discussions with rigorous definitions and with acute analyses. 
 If he had made such definitions and analyses, the whole 
 enchantment, under which the mind of the Berlin professor 
 lies, would have vanished as if at the sign of the cross. 
 " (13) And, in fact, all this large number of errors in this
 
 156 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 small number of words arises not only from the omission 
 of definitions, but, above all, from the omission of analysis. 
 Hegel, who is so contemptuous of the learning of the ages, 
 which fine spirits have now declared too vulgar, has intro- 
 duced into philosophy his concept of becoming, borrowing 
 it bodily from the vulgar. He has not taken the least 
 trouble to rectify or purify it, but has placed it, in all its 
 roughness, bulk, and confusion, as the corner-stone of his 
 edifice. Had he applied a little philosophical analysis to 
 it, he would have seen that becoming, as the vulgar con- 
 ceive it, does not exist in nature save phenomenally. But 
 our philosopher, while he imagines that he is soaring aloft 
 as an eagle, is deceived by the most ordinary prejudices, and 
 contents himself with wrapping them up in obscure verbiage. 
 Becoming, therefore, as we have said, does not exist in the 
 sense of being a point in which one being annuls itself and 
 another begins ; but whatever instant we choose to assign, 
 in that instant being either is or is not, and of that which 
 is, w^e cannot say that it is not yet. Thus, in creation, 
 which Hegel professes to admit,* between the existence and 
 non-existence of the world there was no middle step. Nor 
 is creation a beginning : it is a positing of being in all its 
 completeness. In creation, therefore, there is not a some- 
 thing which becomes, and, even in the created world, 
 becoming belongs to the changing modes of real being, not 
 to being itself; and even of these modes, every one at every 
 instant either is or is not. At all events, it is another mis- 
 take thus to apply to substantial being that which may 
 only, in a certain sense, be predicated of its modes and 
 determinations ; and Hegel applies becoming to being, in 
 such a way that, not content with making being itself 
 become \i.e. enter into the process of its own determi- 
 nation], and become whatever he chooses, he tries to make 
 it becoming itself. But even with respect to the modes and 
 determinations of being, it cannot ... be asserted that 
 
 * " Die tiefere Anschaimng ist dagegen diese, dass Gott die Welt aus Nichts 
 erschaffen habe " {Endyclop., pt. i. § 128. Cf. Siebeck, Die Lehre des Aristoteles 
 vo7t der Ewigkeit der Welt, in Untersuchungen zur Philosophic der Griechen, 
 pp. 137-189; Bernays, Die unter PhilorCs Werken stehende Schrijt iiber die Un- 
 zerstbrbarkeit des Wei tails).
 
 HEGEL'S LOGIC. 157 
 
 there is any true continuity of transition other than pheno- 
 menal, or that one state succeeds another immediately. To 
 be sure, there is continuity ; but this means no more than 
 that the successive states of a being which develops itself 
 — for example, a plant — are so little different from each 
 other that our powers of observation are not equal to dis- 
 tinguishing them, and that, therefore, we imagine there 
 is continuity. As we have elsewhere demonstrated, the 
 concept of continuity in motion is a confused concept, con- 
 cealing an absurdity.* Hegel, therefore, adopts, as the 
 basis of his system and of his new logic, a most vulgar 
 concept, phenomenal in its origin, confused and carrying 
 within it an absurdity. One can easily conceive that a 
 philosopher, who sets out with propositions so equivocal, 
 arbitrary, confused, erroneous, and absurd, may very easily, 
 especially if he is gifted with great power of abstraction, 
 such as we find generally in Germans, draw from them the 
 strangest consequences and create a species of fantastic 
 universe, calculated to surprise untrained and confident 
 young minds, and thus to form a kind of school, as we find 
 the philosopher of Stuttgard has done ; but any man, 
 whose sense has been educated in a manly way, and who 
 does not allow hirrtself to be hoodwinked by a blind 
 (though, it may be, sometimes generous) enthusiasm, 
 weighs the grounds, and penetrates to the bottom, of 
 every new doctrine, and thus does not fall into such nets. 
 The celebrity of this man is explicable. It is one of those 
 numerous celebrities which blossom in university halls, one 
 of those crowns woven by the hands of unsophisticated 
 youth" {Logic, §§ 40-52). 
 
 We have quoted this long passage for three reasons : 
 first, because it shows the wide gulf which separates the 
 philosophy of Rosmini from the romantic idealism of 
 Germany ; second, because it affords an excellent example 
 of his method of dealing with subtle questions ; and, third, 
 
 * See A^ew Essay, vol. ii. §§ 814, 815; Psychology, vol, ii. §§ 1210-1223. 
 Rosmini denies all continuity in any transient act, that is, any act involving 
 movement. His arguments, some of which are identical with those of Zeno, if 
 not altogether convincing, are, at least, very acute and deserving of careful con- 
 sideration.
 
 IJS PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 because it shows how serviceable his first principle is in 
 clearing up the entanglements of subjectivism. A very- 
 instructive parallel might be drawn between the above 
 criticism of Hegel's system and that pronounced by Tren- 
 delenburg, which is also very able. 
 
 54. 
 
 Aim of The aim of reasoning is certainty, and cer- 
 
 andnatifre tainty is a firm persuasion in accordance with 
 El^.r"" known truth. 
 
 Elsewhere Rosmini defines certainty as " a firm and 
 reasonable persuasion conformable to truth," and then pro- 
 ceeds : " I may have present to my spirit a true opinion, and 
 yet doubt of its truth : in that case, I have no certainty. It 
 is not, therefore, enough that a thing should be true, in 
 order that it should be true for me. In order that it may 
 be true for me, I must have a motive which produces in me 
 ^. firm persuasion, and produces it reasonably ; that is, by 
 means of a reason which convinces me that my opinion and 
 belief are true and indubitable. Although it is a fact that 
 logical truth has no existence in itself, outside of all sub- 
 sistence, nevertheless, it exists in itself outside of the 
 human intellect, and this justifies the distinction between 
 true in itself and true for man. A thing becomes true for 
 man by means of the certainty which he has of its truth. 
 . . . Certainty, therefore, results from three elements : first, 
 truth in the object ; second, firm persuasion in the subject ; 
 and, tJiird, a motive or ground producing such persuasion " 
 {Neiv Essay, vol. iii. § 1044, 1045). St. Thomas distinguishes 
 two kinds of certainty. " Certitude," he says, " potest con- 
 siderari dupliciter, uno modo ex causa certitudinis, et sic 
 dicitur esse certius id quod habet certiorem causam. . . . 
 Alio modo potest considerari certitudo ex parte subjecti ; 
 et sic dicitur esse certius quod plenius consequitur intel- 
 lectus hominis " {Sum. Th., n? q. 4, art. 8, cor, ; cf q. i , 
 art. I, m.). " Certainty," says Sir W. Hamilton, "expresses
 
 NATURE OF CERTAINTY. 159 
 
 either the firm conviction which we have of the truth of a 
 thing, or the character of the proof on which it rests " 
 {Led. on Metaph., vol. i. p. 161). It will be seen that 
 Rosmini's definition of certainty includes both objective 
 and subjective certainty. 
 
 55- 
 Logic, therefore, has two offices : (i) to defend Twofold 
 
 office of 
 
 the existence of truth in general and the validity Logic. 
 of reason in particular ; (2) to teach men to use 
 their power of reasoning so as to arrive at com- 
 plete possession and conviction of truth — to attain 
 certainty. Logic, therefore, may be divided into 
 two parts : (i) defence of truth, and (2) means of 
 arriving at truth and certitude. 
 
 56. 
 
 Truth is a quality of knowledge. Knowledge what is 
 is true when that which is known is. Let us 
 reflect closely upon this definition of truth. If the 
 thing which is known is, it is true ; therefore the 
 truth of a thing is, in the last analysis, its being. 
 Known being, therefore, is the truth of knowledge. Truth is 
 But the form of intelligence is being, as ideology of our in- 
 shows us. Hence the form of intelligence is truth. ^ 'sence. 
 The first truth, therefore, is possessed by the 
 human spirit through its very nature. This very 
 simple deduction disposes of those sceptics who 
 deny all truth, as well as of those who, without 
 expressly denying the existence of certain truths, 
 nevertheless declare that all truth is unattainable 
 by man.
 
 i6o PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 The above definition of truth differs shghtly from that 
 adopted by Aristotle, according to whom truth, and, of 
 course, also falsehood, are qualities of judgments. The 
 difference, however, is really not essential, inasmuch as all 
 knowledge, properly so called, is the result of judgments. 
 Aristotle, moreover, admits that the knowledge of indivi- 
 sibles — a knowledge which would correspond to Rosmini's 
 intuition — cannot possibly be false (see under § 47 ; and cf. 
 Aristotle, De Animd, iii. 6, i ; 430 a, 27 sq. : De Interp., i. ; 
 16 a, 12 sqq. : Metaph., ix. 10; 105 1 b, 3 sq.). 
 
 That being and truth are equivalent terms is a 
 favourite doctrine with Rosmini, and would seem to 
 follow from the theory that being is at once the form 
 of mind and of cognition. " It is essential to cognition," 
 he says, " that it should be the truth or true. . . . Whence 
 it follows that the formal cause of cognition, that which 
 imparts to it the essence of cognition, must be the truth 
 itself, since to be true means simply to have the truth in it. 
 If, therefore, ideal being is the formal cause of cognition, 
 and this being is the truth, it follows that it is also the 
 supreme criterion, since that which essentially is has no 
 need to recur to anything else in order to be so, and there 
 is nothing anterior to essence. The criterion of truth, 
 therefore, reduced to a proposition will be this : That 
 which the human spirit apprehends is true if it is con- 
 formable to being, and false if it is not so. 
 
 " But even independently of this demonstration, we 
 may show in another way that being is the truth. For 
 what is truth ? This question contains its own answer. By 
 asking what IS, we imply that when we say what it is, we 
 shall have answered the question. But being is precisely 
 that which is, and which essentially is, because it is being. 
 If that which IS IS that which IS, then that which is is the 
 truth ; therefore, being is the truth. In fact, being cannot 
 not-be ; if it could, it would not be being : hence being 
 necessarily is. But being is in all the things that are, and 
 in all that is affirmed of them ; hence being is the truth 
 essential, necessary and universal. Hence, again, being is 
 the criterion of the truth and the supreme criterion,
 
 BEING AND TRUTH. i6i 
 
 because it is immediate. Being itself the truth, and at the 
 same time the formal cause of all cognition, it introduces 
 necessity, simply because that which is cannot not - be " 
 {Neiv Essay, vol. iii. §§ 1047, 1048). 
 
 It will be seen that in the above quotation Rosmini 
 confounds the is of the copula with the entirely different 
 is of existence, the nv mq aXiiOig, as Aristotle would say, 
 with the ov ^wafXH (see Brentano, Von der mannigfacheji 
 Bedeuhuig dcs Seicnden nach Aristoteles, pp. 6 sqq.). 
 Indeed, it cannot be said that Rosmini's identification of 
 truth with being is either logical or felicitous. Truth is not 
 being, but an attribute or quality of the manner in which 
 being is applied. It is true that when that which is known, 
 or, in other words, that which is judged to be, is, the 
 knowledge and the judgment expressing it are both true ; 
 but the same is the case when that which is judged not to 
 be is not. If, therefore, in the first case I am justified in 
 making an abstract noun of my predicate and calling it 
 truth, so am I likewise in the second ; whence it would 
 follow that not-being, as well as being, was truth. Unless 
 being is a mere relation, it cannot be truth ; but surely 
 being is not a relation. If it were, then the object of 
 human intelligence being a relation, all knowledge would 
 be relative, which Rosmini would be the first to deny. 
 The tendency to elevate truth, which is a mere relation, 
 into a subject, has caused much ambiguity and mischief in 
 philosophical discussion. When Jesus, speaking to Orientals, 
 says, " I am the way and the truth and the life," such 
 figurative expressions are easily understood, and need 
 mislead no one ; but when St. Thomas undertakes to 
 prove that God is truth {Swmna contra Gent., lib. I., c. Ix.), or 
 when Hegel tells us that the truth is concrete {Encyclopcedie, 
 Einleitung, § 14), that it is the self-mediated, the uncon- 
 ditioned, etc., they are simply putting words in the place 
 of thoughts, and helping to confound thinking. It is for- 
 tunate for Rosmini's system that this identification of 
 truth with being is not in any way essential to it. Rosmini 
 was probably led to make this identification through the 
 
 M
 
 i62 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 ambiguity of the Italian word vero, which, like the German 
 wahr, means actual as well as true. 
 
 Confirma- This argument may be stated In another way, 
 
 same doc- If what I know is, I know the truth. But, by 
 nature, I intuite the essence of being. Now, the 
 essence of being is simply being itself, inasmuch 
 as, when I say being, I exclude non-being. The 
 being, therefore, which I know by nature, is ; 
 hence my first cognition is true : I possess a first 
 truth, since what I know is. 
 
 "Every time," says Rosmini, "that we attribute to a thing 
 that part of being which it has in it, neither more nor less, 
 the proposition we utter is true. The character, therefore, 
 of true propositions is, that in them is recognized, in that 
 which forms the object in question, that amount of being 
 which is in it, neither more nor less, and that this is 
 expressed in the predicate. In fact, errors take place only 
 in the following cases: — (i) When being is said or uttered 
 of a thing which has it not ; (2) When being is denied of a 
 thing which has it ; (3) When it is affirmed that a thing has 
 a mode or grade of being which it has not ; (4) When it is 
 denied that a thing has a mode or grade of being which it 
 has " {N'ezu Essay, vol. iii. § 1062). This is true, and yet 
 the demonstration attempted in the above section is a very 
 unfortunate one. The intuition of indeterminate being, 
 given, as it is, by nature, is not liable to error ; but this 
 proves nothing with regard to determinate being, since 
 indeterminate being furnishes us with no criterion whereby 
 to distinguish one mode or grade of it from another. 
 Merely to know that x is, and y is, does not enable us to 
 determine the mode of either. The modes of being are 
 given in sensation (see § 65), and the great desideratum is 
 to find a standard of sense. If mere being could enable
 
 NATURE OF ILLUSION. 163 
 
 us to settle degrees of heat, what would be the use of the 
 thermometer ? (cf § 69). 
 
 58. 
 Here the transcendental idealist comes for- Transcen- 
 
 1 1 T7- !• Ml- Tr dental 
 
 ward and says, " Your truth is an illusion. You scepticism 
 merely think you know what being is ; but it may, the doc- 
 after all, be only an appearance." I reply: Your the mind 
 objection merely shows that you have not under- nature pos- 
 stood the manner in which I have just shown that fi^s^tmh. 
 man possesses the first truth ; that you have not 
 understood the first truth of which I am speaking, 
 since your possibility of illusion does not touch 
 the first truth at all. In fact, what do we mean Reply, in 
 by illusion ? We mean that something appears un1veTsai° 
 which is not, or in a mode in which it is not. sionfsinv- 
 Now, neither of these forms of illusion can touch Two kinds 
 the first truth of which we have been speaking. °^ ^i^^^'°"- 
 Such illusions can at best touch only those 
 secondary cognitions which we form when we 
 affirm, for example, real beings. With these we 
 shall deal at the proper time. At present, how- 
 ever, it may be admitted that when I affirm a 
 particular real being, I am liable to illusion in 
 both the forms mentioned. In other words, I 
 may affirm a certain real being, and this being 
 may not be, may not subsist. Or I may affirm that 
 a particular real being is in one mode, when, in fact, 
 it is in another. But neither of these forms of 
 illusion is possible with reference to my knowledge 
 of the essence of being, pure and simple. Let us
 
 164 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Proof of 
 the impos- 
 sibility of 
 the first 
 illusion. 
 
 prove this with regard to the first form of 
 illusion. 
 
 In regard to being, apart from all determi- 
 nations, to know what it is, and to think I know 
 what it is, are one and the same thing. When I 
 think I know what being is, I do know what it is, 
 and when I know what it is, I know the truth, 
 since the essence of being is to be. In fact, we 
 hold that to know what being is, is to know the 
 truth. But our objector says, " You only think 
 you know what being is ; but this may be an 
 illusion." In answer to this, let us observe that 
 the knowledge of what being is, is the simple 
 conception of being, and not an affirmation of 
 any subsistent being. When this is considered, is 
 it possible to doubt whether we have the con- 
 ception of being or not, without having that 
 conception ? Before we can doubt whether we 
 have the conception of being, we must have the 
 very conception about which we are doubting. 
 In the same way, before we can believe that we 
 have the conception of being, we must have the 
 conception to which that belief refers. The 
 illusion in question is, therefore, not possible, 
 since we cannot assert that the conception of 
 being is illusory, without having the conception in 
 question. The nature of simple conceptions is 
 such that we either have them or have them not. 
 If we have them not, we cannot believe that we 
 have them, since believing we have them and 
 actually having them are one and the same thing.
 
 NATURE OF ILLUSION, 165 
 
 We cannot say that any concept, as such, is illusory. 
 Before we can say so, we must have the concept, and to 
 have a concept is all that is necessary to make it a true 
 concept. It is an entirely different question whether there 
 be anything- real, that is, anything not posited by us, cor- 
 responding to such concept. Our belief that there is may 
 be illusory ; but this belief is not the concept itself, but a 
 judgment respecting a relation of the concept, its relation 
 to reality. Our concept of a unicorn, or a rjOo-yeXo^oe, as 
 Aristotle's example is {De Interp., i. ; 16 a, 16), is a true 
 concept, although there s nothing real corresponding to it. 
 
 59- 
 Let us now take up the second illusion and The im- 
 
 1 1 . 1-1 • -11 1 possibility 
 
 show that It likewise cannot possibly touch ourofthe 
 
 second. 
 
 first knowledge of being. We are told, " You in- illusion 
 tuite being, but are you sure that you intuite it as ^™^^ " 
 it is? Might it not be in a ;;2(?<7^(? different from that 
 in which it appears ? " This objection supposes 
 that being has different 7nocles. But for this very 
 reason it cannot apply to the first intuition, since 
 in it being is without modes. We repeat, there- 
 fore, that the objection lodged has no validity save 
 in relation to our knowledge of being as invested 
 with some particular mode. Then, indeed, we 
 may be illuded, and being may appear to us in 
 one mode when in truth it exists in another. 
 How far this is possible, we shall consider when 
 we come to speak of special cognitions having for 
 their object determinate beings. But at present 
 we are dealing with being as destitute of modes, 
 of the pure, simple essence of being ; illusions, 
 therefore, which might be possible with regard to
 
 1 66 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 its modes, are impossible with regard to itself. 
 Hence I have said somewhere that the manifest 
 and essential truth of being shines forth in its 
 Muiversality. This universality entirely destroys 
 transcendental scepticism, which gratuitously 
 assumes that the human mind is endowed only 
 with restrictive and modal forms, whereas, in fact, 
 it has but one universal form without any modes 
 at all. Modes, indeed, have no existence save in 
 the world of reality. It follows directly from this 
 that those who hold being in its universality and 
 simplicity to be a subjective product, that is, a 
 product of the subject man (§ 36), make an assump- 
 tion not only gratuitous, but plainly false and 
 contradictory, inasmuch as man himself is only 
 a limited, modal, and contingent realization of the 
 essence of being. 
 
 Transition 
 from ob- 
 servation 
 to the 
 proof that 
 observa- 
 tion is a 
 valid 
 source of 
 know- 
 ledge. 
 
 60. 
 
 Let us now look back and consider what we 
 have proved. In the first place, by means of 
 simple observation, we established the fact that 
 the human mind knows what being is, leaving 
 undecided the question whether observation was 
 a reliable source of truth. This question we have 
 now decided, and shown that observation is valid. 
 Having found that the result of observation is 
 the intuition of being, we were able to convince 
 ourselves of the truth of observation itself, inas- 
 much as we found in intuited being that clear 
 light of truth which excludes from our observation 
 all possibility of deceit, error, or illusion (§ 11).
 
 NO ILLUSION IN THE MODES OF BEING. 167 
 
 This is a strong point in Rosmini's system, the point at 
 which he emerges from the vicious circle described under 
 § 10, and passes from mere tentative thinking to philo- 
 sophical, constructive thinking. We must be very careful 
 to remember that being, though reached by a process of 
 abstraction, and in reality abstract, is, nevertheless, not 
 a mere mode or attribute of the abstracting subject, 
 but an objective entity and the very essence of objectivity. 
 In modern times we are wont to confound abstract with 
 subjective, and therefore to imagine that the nature of every 
 abstraction depends upon the nature of the subject. This 
 is utterly false. Our sensations, indeed, are purely sub- 
 jective, but our concepts of them are purely objective, and 
 could not be thought correctly, even by God, otherwise than 
 they are thought by us. 
 
 61. 
 
 The same arguments by which we have Enorim 
 answered the sceptical objections of the transcen- in°ideaJ 
 dental idealist and shown that the simple concep- fnS^"*^ 
 tion of being cannot, in any degree, be illusory, ^^^^^' ^' 
 are equally valid for special concepts or ideas. If, 
 indeed, there be error in these, it must lie either 
 in the undetermined being which forms their com- 
 mon basis, or else in the particular modes under 
 which they present limited being to us. But we 
 have already seen that in undetermined being 
 there is no possibility of error. It now remains 
 to be seen whether error can occur in the modes 
 of these same concepts. Now, what do we mean 
 when we say that there is error in the modes of 
 being ? We mean that a being appears to us in 
 one mode, when, in truth, it exists in another. 
 The possibility of error, therefore, arises from the
 
 i68 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Ideas are 
 the exem- 
 plary 
 truths of 
 things. 
 
 fact that the same being cannot exist in more than 
 one mode at the same time, and that if we attri- 
 bute to it another mode than that in which it is, 
 this other mode is not, and therefore we have 
 made a false judgment, an error. Such false 
 judgments we make frequently in reference to 
 real beings, which are limited to a single mode. 
 For example, I may make the false judgment that 
 a given being is a man, when it is an animal or a 
 bush ; I am in error because I attribute to it a 
 mode which does not belong to it. But, if I am 
 dealing not with real beings, but with purely ideal 
 being, the conditions of error are altogether want- 
 ino-. Inasmuch as ideal beino- is not limited to a 
 single mode, but has potentially all modes, it may 
 be realized in all modes. Therefore, whatever 
 mode of ideal being I may conceive, it is free 
 from error, since it must always be one of its 
 modes. These modes of ideal being are concepts, 
 specific or generic ideas ; hence all specific and 
 generic ideas are absolutely free from error. The 
 ancients, therefore, were right when they taught 
 that error can never occur in ideas, but only in 
 judgments, and that the knowledge, so called, that 
 comes from simple intuition, is entirely free from 
 error. For this reason, moreover, we say that 
 ideas are exemplary truths, and that things (real 
 beings) receive their truth from their conformity 
 to ideas. If, for example, I judge that a certain 
 being is a horse, and it is a horse, we say that it 
 is a real horse, meaning thereby that it corresponds 
 to the idea of horse, to that mode which I attri- 
 bute to it and whereby I judge it.
 
 ERROR IN RELATIONS OF IDEAS. 169 
 
 62. 
 
 But when we say that no error can occur in There can 
 
 . be no error 
 
 Simple ideas, we do not mean to extend this without a 
 
 7 • r • r T 1 judgment. 
 
 assertion to the relation of jacas. In these, 
 indeed, there may be error, inasmuch as they 
 are affirmed by means of a judgment, which has 
 the possibiHty of being false as well as true. 
 Thus, for example, I am in error if I judge that 
 one idea is contained in another when it is not — 
 that two, let us say, goes into five twice without 
 a remainder. In a word, there can be no error 
 where there is no judgment. Simple intuition 
 does not admit error. 
 
 Aristotle very correctly says, '"Ev otg koI to \pevBog koX 
 TO a\riOl(^, avvOeaig Tig ?)S>j vor^jiaTwv loairep tv ovtwv " {De 
 Animd, iii. 6, i ; 430 a, 27 sq). He affirms, on the con- 
 trary, that " H fikv ovv Thjv aciaipiTMV vorjcng ev TOVTOig wipi 
 a ovK i(TTL TO \ptvSog " {Ibid.^ 26 sq.) 
 
 63- 
 
 It does not follow from this that error is There are 
 possible in every judgment. On the contrary, ibsoSy 
 there are judgments in which error is absolutely enor.'^*^™ 
 impossible. For example, after 1 have discovered 
 that in the intuition of being, whether universal 
 or special, no error is possible, I may express this 
 in the form of a judgment, and say. In ideas 
 there is no error. In so doing, I form a judgment 
 absolutely free from error, for the simple reason 
 that what I express in it is free from error. In
 
 I70 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM 
 
 the same way, all judgments which express only 
 what the mind intultes are free from error ; for 
 example, these two : The object of knowledge is 
 being ; Being and not-being, as predicated of the 
 same thing, at the same time, is not an object 
 of cognition. These propositions, these judg- 
 ments, express only what the intuition of being 
 shows us. The first expresses the fact that being 
 is the essential object, the form, of the intelli- 
 gence ; the second, that if being, the object of 
 the intelligence, be removed, it cannot still be 
 present. Here also the simple intuition of being 
 shows itself to be the necessary condition of 
 knowing. 
 
 " Although the idea of being is possessed in the way 
 of simple intuition without subjective affirmation, yet there 
 is in it iniplicitly an objective J2idgincnt, This being the 
 origin of all judgments, we must turn back upon it, in 
 order to see how this implicit judgment is developed by 
 man, and how it renders itself explicit. 
 
 " The word being expresses an act,* the absolutely 
 first act. An act may be conceived and expressed in two 
 ways : (i) as an act which is seen taking place ; (2) as an 
 act which takes place. In the former way, that is, as seoi 
 by the mind, it is expressed by nouns or the infinitives of 
 verbs, which are also nouns ; such is the infinitive mode, 
 TO BE.f In the second way, that is, as an act taking 
 place, without the relation of seen, it is expressed by that 
 inflexion which the grammarians call the third person 
 singular, present tense of the verb, as, for example, when 
 
 * Act, actus, ivepyeia, entirely different frcm action, actio, irpa^ts. The 
 distinction belongs to Aristotle. 
 
 t This is the literal translation. In English, instead of the infinitive, used 
 in Greek, Latin, German, and the Romance languages, we employ more 
 frequently the verbal noun ending in ing- (A.S. tn^, entirely different from the 
 participle, which ended in and).
 
 NOUNS AND VERBS. 171 
 
 we say IS. The two modes of conceiving, expressed by 
 the two forms TO BE [EngHsh, being] and IS, are different 
 concepts of the same act, and are distinguished because 
 they express the same act in two relations : first, to the 
 person who is able to see it — relation of cognizability ; 
 second, to the person who performs it, or to itself as 
 performing. This is the essential and radical . difference 
 that holds between nouns and verbs. The former express 
 acts in so far as they ^xq, per se, visible; the latter, acts 
 in so far as they are performed. Now, in the concept 
 of an act which is seen, there is implicitly included the 
 concept of an act which takes place, because the act which 
 is seen is an act which is seen to be performed and posited. 
 . . . But the act which is seen or conceived as taking place, 
 and so expressed, is a possible judgment, as, in the case 
 under consideration, this form IS expresses a judgment, 
 although an incomplete one. Hence we must admit that 
 in intuited being there is contained implicitly an objective 
 judgment. ... It must be observed that the judgment 
 expressed by the word IS, when merely applied to being 
 itself, has so much evidence and necessity, that he who 
 sees it cannot refuse it his assent. . . . Being, therefore, 
 contains an objective judgment, which is present to the 
 mind as soon as we formulate it, not as seen, but as being 
 (act). Then, in the very act of pronouncing it, we give 
 it our assent, and this, in the logical order, is the first of 
 assents and the origin of all others " {Logic, §§ 320-322, 324). 
 " The word being, therefore, expresses that first act of all 
 acts in a necessary relation to some subject which sees it ; 
 the word is expresses the same act purely and simply in 
 itself. The word being, therefore, expresses an object, the 
 word is, a subject, which object and subject are identical 
 being in the two modes in which the mind apprehends and 
 expresses it. The formula, Being is,* therefore, manifests 
 a relation between subjective cognition (although the cog- 
 nition is not totally subjective) and objective cognition, 
 and this double relation permits the redoubling of being. 
 
 * Cf. Taglioretti, // Verbo Essere (The Verb to Be). This pamphlet has 
 considerable philosophic value and well deserves the attention of philologists.
 
 172 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICAL S YS TEM. 
 
 Hence we derive the two primitive judgments, which 
 implicitly contain all other self-evident judgments — 
 
 (i) Being is the object of intelligence ; 
 
 (2) That which is, is. 
 These two self-evident judgments are called, respectively, 
 the principle of cognition and the principle of identity. 
 They are called principles, because all other judgments 
 are derived from them, and receive from them the ground 
 of their truth" {Logic, §§ 337, 338). "The principle of 
 cognition may be called W\q principle of being ; the principle 
 of identity, ihe principle of the order of being'' {Ibid., § 343)- 
 " The principle of identity is the universal and supreme 
 rule, which enables us to know what judgments are true, 
 and what otherwise. In its application it may be expressed 
 thus : Those judgments are true in which there exists 
 between the subject and the predicate that mode of identity 
 which is affirmed" {Ibid., § 352). 
 
 Such are 
 the judg- 
 ments ex- 
 pressing 
 what is 
 contained 
 in an idea. 
 These are 
 called 
 principles. 
 
 What are 
 principles ? 
 
 64. 
 
 When the content of an idea is pronounced 
 in the form of a judgment and expressed in a 
 proposition, the idea thus expressed assumes the 
 name of principle. The idea is always universal 
 in this sense that it may be realized an indefinite 
 number of times. (To this general rule there are 
 exceptions, which we omit for the present.) The 
 idea of being may be realized in all modes ; 
 generic ideas and also abstract specific ideas, 
 in many modes. If the specific idea is not 
 abstract but full, so as to include all the accidents 
 of the particular being, it can be realized only 
 in one mode, but in an indefinite number of 
 individuals (bating said exceptions). For this 
 reason ideas are said to be universal, and hence
 
 PRINCIPLES, CONTRADICTION, ETC. 173 
 
 also principles are 2iniversal judgments applicable 
 to many cases. For example, the principle which 
 tells us, Being is the object of knowledge, is true, 
 not merely in a single act of knowledge, but in 
 all cognitive acts without distinction. The prin- 
 ciple of contradiction, Being and not-being at the 
 same time, cannot be an object of knowledge, ex- 
 presses the absurdity of all contradictory proposi- 
 tions. Absurdity is the unfitness of a proposition Meaning 
 
 , ,.-,,, of absurd. 
 
 to be an object 01 knowledge. 
 
 "Principles," says Rosmini, "are self-evident, most 
 universal judgments, which impart the Hght of truth, and 
 hence certainty, to all those other judgments which are 
 drawn from them, . . . and which in regard to them are 
 called consequences" {Logic, § 359). 
 
 '^Absurd is that which involves contradiction" {New 
 Essay, vol. ii. § 793). " Before the idea of being can take 
 the form of the principle of contradiction, I must have used 
 it ; I must have begun to judge and reason. I must have 
 formed for myself a mental being, notJdng : I must have 
 acquired an idea of affirmation and negation, which are acts 
 of thinking. I must have observed that negation united 
 with affirmation forms a perfect equation with nothing. 
 Now, however rapidly we perform these operations, judg- 
 ments and ratiocinations, however naturally and immedi- 
 ately they may arise from the idea of being, however true 
 it be that they are all merely the idea of being itself applied, 
 disguised, accompanied by relations, it is always necessary 
 that our reason move from that first state of perfect quiet, 
 in which, like a spring, it rests in tension. But all that 
 in us is the consequence of any non-essential, non-innate 
 movement of the reason, is acquisition, and such, in its 
 explicit form of judgment, is the principle of contradiction " 
 {Ibid., § 566). " The principle of contradiction simplified is 
 as follows : — That which is (being) cannot not-be. That 
 which is is the subject, not-be the predicate ; cannot is the
 
 174 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 copula which expresses the relation between the two terms. 
 What then, in this judgment, is the relation between being 
 and not-being? Impossibility. And we have seen what 
 logical impossibility is. It is simple unthinkability, in a 
 word, nothing. . . . Hence the principle of contradiction is 
 merely impossibility of thinking " {Ibid., §561). This accords 
 completely with Aristotle's famous dictum," To yojO ovto 'dfxa 
 vTrap\Hv re koI fxi) virap^Hv acvvarov toj avrio icoi Karn to avTo 
 {Metaphys., iii. 3 ; 1005 b, 19 sq.), which he holds to be the 
 most certain of all principles (" [3£/3ator«rr) tmv a/)\wv ") (cf. 
 under § 15). 
 
 Primitive 
 judgments 
 affirming 
 that what 
 is felt 
 exists are 
 free from 
 error. 
 
 65. 
 
 Principles, therefore, being only intuited ideas, 
 whose objects are expressed in the form of judg- 
 ments, it follows that they are as free from error 
 as the ideas themselves. But if the ideas and 
 principles of human knowledge are beyond the 
 reach of error, what shall we say of the primitive 
 synthesis, whereby we affirm the real things 
 communicated to us in feeling? May we claim 
 immunity from error for the perception of real 
 things, that is, of the activity felt by us and 
 affirmed as a being ? In the perception of a real 
 being we must distinguish two things — the affirma- 
 tion of being, and the affirmation of the mode of 
 being determined by the feeling. In the affirma- 
 tion of being, considered apart from its modes, 
 there can be no error, since there can be no error 
 in the essence of being intuited by us. To affirm 
 a being is to affirm the essence of being intuited, 
 in its realization. This essence we know with 
 an evidence which is beyond the possibility of
 
 PRIMITIVE JUDGMENTS FREE FROM ERROR. 173 
 
 error, and therefore we cannot fail to recognize it 
 when it presents itself to us as realized. We 
 must observe, moreover, that the modes of being 
 are determined by feeling, and not by intelligence. 
 Now, we must carefully note that the child, in its The child 
 first perceptions, does not affirm the modes of being only, 
 being, but simply being itself.* Being is indeed modes. 
 determined for it by its feelings, but it does not 
 stop to gauge these feelings intellectively, or to 
 determine their limits, forms, or differences. So 
 long, therefore, as we pronounce no judgment 
 upon the feelings which constitute the reality of 
 beings, but accept them simply and solely as 
 modal realizations of being, so long we do not 
 expose ourselves to any risk of error. Those per- 
 ceptions, therefore, whether made by a child or any 
 one else, in which feeling is taken merely as the 
 realization of being, no attention being directed 
 to its mode or limits, are such that error is 
 excluded from them. The judgment, therefore, 
 which affirms the existence of real beings in 
 general, or the realization of being as such, with- 
 out adding anything with respect to modes or 
 limitations, is absolutely free from error. It 
 remains to be seen whether the same is true of 
 the judgment which affirms the determinate mode 
 of real beings, that is, which, on occasion of a 
 particular feeling, affirms that one being, rather 
 than another, subsists. 
 
 * " Schon dem Kiiide wird das Nachdenken geboten. , . . Die Kegel ist 
 nichts Anderes als ein Allgemeines und diesem Allgemeinen soil das Kind das 
 Besondere gemass machen" (Hegel, Encydop., pt. i. § 21, Zusatz). It is need- 
 less to say that the first universal is being.
 
 176 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 To affirm the existence of reality in general is merely 
 to affirm that I have a feeling. Now, while I may make an 
 incorrect identification of one present feeling with another 
 merely remembered, I can never be in any doubt that I 
 feel, and this fact is altogether independent of whether 
 there be any external cause producing my feeling. I may 
 think I am loaded down when I am merely fatigued, thus 
 mistaking the feeling of weakness for that of weight ; but 
 this does not interfere with the fact that I have a feeling. 
 Unless I had a feeling I could not even misinterpret it. 
 My feeling is always equally a reality, whatever be its 
 origin. It follows from this that the essence of reality is 
 beyond all mistaking. One must be careful not to confound 
 with ideal being, which is essentially indeterminate, the 
 indeterminate concept of real being. The former is the 
 simplest of all ideas ; the latter, the vaguest of all concepts, 
 the individuum vagnvi of the Schoolman. The individuum 
 vagissiuutm is pure reality, completely undetermined. 
 
 In percep- 
 tion we 
 add the 
 essence of 
 being to 
 the felt 
 activity, 
 but we 
 never con- 
 found the 
 two. 
 
 66. 
 
 It may be said that, since we must add the 
 essence of being to feeling, before we can affirm 
 or know it as a being, therefore we know in 
 feeling what is not in it. Let us observe, how- 
 ever, that this objection would be valid only if we 
 affirmed that the feeling itself was the essence of 
 being. But this we do not do. We do, indeed, 
 add the essence of being to the felt activity in 
 order to render it a perceptible and knowable 
 being ; but we are perfectly aware, at the same 
 time, that the felt activity is not by itself the 
 essence of being, but only a contingent realization 
 or mode of it, the term of its action. The essence 
 of being, which we add to it, is only the means
 
 SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 177 
 
 whereby we know it, the felt activity not being 
 knowable except when seen in being (§ 31). We 
 may cite a parallel case. We cannot perceive 
 accident without perceiving it in substance, and yet 
 we never mistake the one for the other : we 
 always know perfectly that the accident is some- 
 thing different from the substance which we add 
 to it in the act of perceiving it. 
 
 It would seem plain enough that the sensation of pain 
 and the thought or concept of the same pain are two 
 different things ; in other words, that sensation is not per- 
 ception. This distinction was made as early as Plotinus, 
 who says that al(T9i]<THg are not iraOn, but are energies in 
 relation to corporeal things and judgments in regard to 
 spiritual ones.* It has been frequently restated, more or 
 less perfectly, by many philosophers since his time ; but 
 no one before Rosmini clearly marked the distinguishing 
 element. In modern times the distinction was made 
 current mainly by Reid, who expresses it as follows : — " If 
 ... we attend to the act of the mind which we call per- 
 ception of an external object of sense, we shall find in it 
 these three things : _^rst, some conception or notion of 
 the object perceived ; secondly, a strong and irresistible 
 conviction and belief of its present existence ; and, 
 thirdly, that this conviction and belief are immediate, and 
 not the effect of reasoning." " Almost all perceptions 
 have corresponding sensations, which constantly accom- 
 pany them, and, on that account, are very apt to be 
 confounded with them. . . . When I smell a rose, there is 
 in this operation both sensation and perception. The 
 agreeable odour I feel, considered by itself, without relation 
 to any external object, is merely a sensation. It affects 
 the mind in a certain way ; and this affection of the mind 
 may be conceived, without a thought of the rose or any 
 other object. This sensation can be nothing else than it is 
 
 * Enneads, iii. 6, 2 ; in Kirchhoff's edition, xxv. i, vol. i. p. 206. 
 
 N
 
 178 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 felt to be. Its very essence consists in being felt ; and 
 when it is not felt, it is not. There is no difference between 
 the sensation and the feeling of it ; they are one and the 
 same thing. . . . Let us next attend to the perception 
 which we have in smelling a rose. Perception has always 
 an external object ; and the object of my perception, in 
 this case, is that quality in the rose which I discern by the 
 sense of smell. Observing that the agreeable sensation is 
 raised when the rose is near, and ceases when it is removed, 
 I am led, by my nature, to conclude some quality to be in 
 the rose which is the cause of this sensation. This quality 
 in the rose is the object perceived ; and that act of the 
 mind, by which I have the conviction and belief of this 
 quality, is what in this case I call perception."* The distinc- 
 tion is excellently drawn, but the ground of it is not given. 
 We are merely told that perception has always an external 
 object, though what this means is not explained, and that 
 we are compelled by our nature to place our sensations in 
 some such object. This is stating, rather than explaining, a 
 fact. Sir William Hamilton, who, though contemporary 
 with Rosmini, was earlier in the history of philosophy, says 
 of Reid's distinction, " The opposition of perception and 
 sensation is true, but it is not a statement adequate to the 
 generality of the contrast. Perception is only a special 
 kind of knowledge, and sensation only a special kind of 
 feeling. . . . Now, as perception is only a special mode of 
 knowledge, and sensation only a special mode of feeling, so 
 the contrast of perception and sensation is only the special 
 manifestation of a contrast, which universally divides the 
 generic phaenomena themselves. It ought, therefore, in 
 the first place, to have been noticed that the generic 
 phsenomena of knowledge and feeling are always found 
 coexistent and yet always distinct ; and the opposition of 
 perception and sensation should have been stated as an 
 obtrusive, but still only a particular, example of the 
 general law. But not only is the distinction of perception 
 and sensation not generalized — not referred to its category 
 by our psychologists ; it is not concisely and precisely 
 
 * Intellectual Powers, Essay ii. ch. xvi.. Collected Works, p. 310.
 
 SENSATION AND PERCEPTION. 179 
 
 Stated. A cognition is objective, that is, our consciousness 
 is then relative to something different from the present 
 state of the mind itself; a feeling, on the contrary, is 
 subjective, that is, our consciousness is exclusively limited 
 to the pleasure or pain experienced by the thinking subject. 
 Cognition and feeling are always coexistent. . . . Per- 
 ception proper is the consciousness, through the senses, of 
 the qualities of an object known as different from self; 
 sensation proper is the consciousness of the subjective 
 affection of pleasure or pain, which accompanies that act of 
 knowledge. Perception is thus the objective element in 
 the complex state — the element of cognition ; sensation is 
 the subjective element — the element of feeling" {Lectures 
 on Metaphysics, vol. ii. pp. 98 sq.). 
 
 It will be seen from this that Sir William Hamilton had 
 no clear notion of the distinction between perception and 
 sensation. According to him, we should have no perception 
 of self or its qualities, and no sensation of anything but 
 pleasure and pain. This is plainly false, and Sir William 
 would not have assumed such grounds of distinction, had 
 he been able to state the true ones. This he was unable to 
 do, because he had only a very vague and negative notion 
 of what constitutes objectivity. Indeed, in this respect, as 
 in many others, he is inferior to Reid. Rosmini (who had 
 great respect for Reid, and indeed owed him much) adopted 
 his distinction between sensation and perception, gave 
 these terms the generality claimed by Plamilton for cogni- 
 tion and feeling, and showed what was the real distinction 
 between them ; viz., that, while sensation is merely a modi- 
 fication of the subject involving no act on its part, percep- 
 tion is the result of a synthetic judgment, wherein the 
 subject, by the addition of being to sensation, objectifies 
 the latter and so cognizes it. Thus sensation and perception 
 are, or, at least, may be, co-extensive. It is curious that 
 though Hamilton (17S8-1856) and Rosmini (1797-1855) 
 were contemporaries, and though the former was acquainted 
 with Italian philosophers, and the latter with nearly all the 
 thinkers of the Scotch school, the one seems never to have 
 heard of the other. For Rosmini's distinction between
 
 j8o 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 sensation, sensitive perception, and intellective perception, see 
 under § 74. 
 
 Judgments 
 respecting 
 the mode 
 of per- 
 ceived 
 beings. 
 
 Condition 
 of their 
 validity. 
 
 Three pos- 
 sibilities 
 with re- 
 gard to 
 this con- 
 dition. 
 
 We may 
 
 be de- 
 ceived 
 in deter- 
 mining 
 the modes 
 of per- 
 ceived 
 being, but 
 we are not 
 necessarily 
 so. 
 
 67. 
 
 When we say that felt activity is realized being, 
 it is plain that being must be realized in that 
 mode which constitutes the felt activity. There- 
 fore, if it is true that, when I pronounce a judg- 
 ment on a mode of being, I merely pronounce and 
 affirm that activity which I feel, nothing more and 
 nothing less, it is evident that my judgment must 
 be true. Here then I have found the condition 
 whose fulfilment will enable me to escape error 
 even in my judgments respecting the mode of 
 perceived being. It is this, that I affirm simply 
 what I feel, nothing more and nothing less. It 
 remains to be seen whether this condition is 
 necessarily present in all such judgments, or 
 whether it is necessarily not present, or finally 
 whether, though it may always be present, it is 
 not necessarily so. In the first case, my judgment 
 would be necessarily true ; in the second, neces- 
 sarily false ; in the third, it might always be true, 
 if I chose to proceed with fairness and caution, 
 but might be false, if I chose to proceed other- 
 wise. Now, it is quite obvious that I am not 
 obliged always to say to myself exactly what I 
 feel. I may lie to myself ; I may say I feel more, 
 or less, or otherwise than I really do. I may take 
 one feeling for another — an internal image, for 
 example, for an external perception. I may, in a 
 word, deceive myself But it is also plain that I
 
 ORIGIN OF ERROR. 18 1 
 
 am not obliged to deceive myself. Who obliges 
 me to say I feel what I do not feel, or to say 
 I feel more, or less, or otherwise than I feel ? 
 
 "The universal principle of all application of human 
 reason to the facts furnished by feeling is this : The known 
 fact must form an equation with the form of the reason. 
 Now, it is plain that, if the knowledge of the fact is equal to 
 the form of the reason, the former being justified, the latter 
 is so likewise and therefore certain " {Neiv Essay ^ vol. iii. 
 § 1 169 ; cf above, §§ 23, 24). 
 
 According to Rosmini, all error is voluntary. " Error," 
 he says, " occurs only in reflection, and only after the point 
 at which reflection begins to be voluntary " {Neiv Essay, 
 vol. iii. § 1279). "There is error every time that, with our 
 assent, we attribute to a subject a predicate which does 
 not belong to it. Therefore, the point at which error 
 occurs is the nexus between the predicate and the subject. 
 We may fall into error without being able to formulate the 
 judgment to which we give assent, and without being able 
 to say where our error lies, because the power to do either 
 of these things demands a reflection superior to that of the 
 particular error into which we fall. Erroneous assents are 
 usually due to some imperfect reflection. But reflection is 
 moved by the will, either habitually and virtually,* or else 
 actually ; it is also influenced, excited, and moved by 
 external agents. Hence the causes of error are of three 
 kinds : flrst, those which are due to the understanding, 
 and arise from the imperfect manner in which reflection 
 operates — disposing causes ; second, those which are due 
 to the will, principally in its habitual state — eflicient causes ; 
 third, those which are due to external events and circum- 
 stances which influence the will — exciting causes " (Logic, 
 §§ 244-246). " The judgment . . . may be irresistibly se- 
 duced. This does not mean that, when the truth stands 
 before our minds, we may be obliged to mistake it, but 
 
 * Perhaps better, from a habit or virtue. In Aristotle's language, " Sia 
 (TwiiQiiav a-wh e|ews " (^Rhet., i. I ; 1354 3., 7)-
 
 l82 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 that we may fall into error from the destruction or con- 
 fusion of our vision. . . . Error is, in the last analysis, 
 always ignorance : he who errs must always first have been 
 subject to some confusion of ideas and mental operations ; 
 finally, he who errs does not properly judge, but prejudges 
 — concludes before he has confronted the two terms of the 
 judgment and perceived their relation" {Anthropology, 
 § 71^)- 
 
 We have 
 a faculty 
 for affirm- 
 ing exactly 
 what we 
 feel, and 
 this faculty 
 is only 
 another 
 function of 
 the faculty 
 whereby 
 we affirm 
 being 
 apart from 
 its modes. 
 
 68. 
 
 If I had never experienced but one feeling, 
 it would be impossible for me to imagine another, 
 or in any way to alter the one I had. Hence 
 I have in me the faculty of affirming feeling as 
 I feel it : this is the faculty with which nature 
 endows me. If I deceive myself, it is because 
 I do not make proper use of this natural faculty, 
 but call in another to disturb and confuse it. 
 I need be in no doubt that I possess this faculty 
 of attesting to myself exactly what I feel, if I 
 reflect that this faculty is but a new use, a new 
 function, of a faculty which I previously recog- 
 nized as infallible — the faculty whereby I affirm 
 being apart from its modes. To affirm being is 
 to recognize the identity between feeling and the 
 essence of being (§§ 23, 24) ; therefore, inasmuch 
 as being is realized in every, even the smallest, 
 activity of feeling, I may in every one affirm it 
 with infallible certitude. But when I affirm beino- 
 in all the activities of a feeling, I affirm the entire 
 mode of the feeling, neither more nor less. If 
 this be true, I possess a faculty which enables me 
 to affirm with certainty even the modes of being.
 
 FACULTY OF ERROR. FAITH. 183 
 
 This faculty is infallible, and, if I deceive myself, Deception 
 
 f . . . . , arises not 
 
 my error must arise not irom this faculty, but from tiris 
 from another which I substitute for it, and which buTfrom 
 for the present I shall call simply Faculty of orerror, '^ 
 Error. Inasmuch, then, as the judgments which Tiiow to 
 I make with regard to the modes of being which '^^""^ '^' 
 I perceive are neither necessarily true nor neces- 
 sarily false, it follows that the error in question 
 is one that may be avoided, but also one that 
 may be incurred. 
 
 " When we give our assent, moved by a false ground, 
 then we give it by an act of will, since we act in virtue of 
 a supposed ground {regione opinatd). But the false ground 
 must have been accepted as true, either by means of a 
 blind, instinctive assent, or through an act of free will, 
 which declared the true false and the false true. In this 
 latter case, in which free will declares a false ground true, 
 that is, gives a false assent, this false assent is given from 
 a motive of interest, which does not prove the truth of that 
 ground. . . . This free will, which, instead of following the 
 ground presented by the intelligence, creates one (a false 
 one) of its own, by putting itself in the place of intel- 
 ligence, is the facility of error. The force of this faculty 
 of error is such that no limits can be assigned to it ; and 
 the history of humanity shows that, under certain con- 
 ditions, it goes so far as to give assent to the most strange 
 and incredible things, and to deny it to the most credible 
 and certain" {Logic, §§ 139, 140; cf § 288). 
 
 St. Thomas, speaking of faith or belief, as distinguished 
 from the other acts of intelligence, says, " Sed actus qui est 
 credepe, habet firmam adhaesionem ad unam partem, in quo 
 convenit credens cum sciente et intelligente ; et tamen ejus 
 cognitio non est perfecta per manifestam visionem, in quo 
 convenit cum dubitante suspicante et opinante: et sic 
 proprium est credentis, ut cum assensu cogitet. Propter 
 hoc distinguitur iste actus qui est credere ab omnibus ac-
 
 i84 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 tibus intellectus, qui sunt circum verum et falsum. . . . 
 Intellectus credentis determinatur ad unum, non per 
 rationem, sed per voluntatem " {Sum. Theol., ii.^ q. 2, 
 art. i). "Voluntas movet intellectum et alias vires animae 
 in finem ; et secundum hoc ponitur actus fidei credere hi 
 Deum " {Ibid., art. 2). 
 
 The error 
 possible 
 in the per- 
 ception of 
 real being. 
 
 Perception 
 is followed 
 by reflec- 
 tion, which 
 tries to 
 determine 
 the exact 
 mode of 
 the per- 
 ceived 
 being. 
 
 Error be- 
 gins with 
 reflection 
 and keeps 
 pace with 
 the com- 
 plication 
 and extent 
 of it. 
 
 69. 
 
 May such error, then, always be avoided ? 
 Yes, provided we are willing to use the necessary 
 precautions ; but, before speaking of these, let us 
 make one observation. The error in question 
 does not occur properly in the perception of real 
 being. The perception of real being takes place 
 as soon as, on occasion of a feeling, we have 
 affirmed it. Then comes reflection, and under- 
 takes to determine and pronounce the exact mode 
 and extent of the perceived being. But, in order 
 to do this, it is obliged not only to fix its attention 
 upon the feeling in all its parts, but also to com- 
 pare it with other feelings and other beings. 
 Thus, the perception of real beings is infallible ; 
 and error enters only where reflection upon per- 
 ception begins. The broader, higher, and more 
 complicated the reflection, the greater, of course, 
 are the chances of error. I have said that, in 
 order to determine the mode and degree of a 
 feeling, we are obliged not only to consider care- 
 fully the feeling itself, but also to compare it with 
 other feelings and other beings previously per- 
 ceived. The reason of this is, that the measure 
 with which such judgments deal is never absolute,
 
 REFLECTION THE OCCASION OF ERROR. 1S5 
 
 but always relative. If we perceived but one 
 quantity, and had no other to compare it with, 
 we should never be able to pronounce any judg- 
 ment reeardine it, or even to invent a name for 
 it. If, therefore, we entirely exclude reflection' 
 which always tends to measure feeling by com- 
 parison, we may readily conceive a kind of ob- 
 servation or intellectual attention which should 
 lay hold of a feeling without pronouncing any- 
 thing in regard to it beyond the simple act of 
 perception. The judgment in this case would be 
 as infallible as the perception itself, of which, in- 
 deed, it is but a part. The perception, then, has 
 two forms, which, if we choose, we may designate 
 thus: (i) perception which pronounces the ex- 
 istence of a real being determined by feeling, and 
 nothing more ; (2) perception which pronounces 
 the presence of a real being and of the feeling 
 which determines it, without referring it to any 
 other feeling. 
 
 Since all error lies in reflection, that is, in the analysis 
 of what unerring nature presents to the mind, it is im- 
 portant to know exactly what reflection is. " Reflection," 
 says Rosmini, " is a voluntary attention directed to our 
 conceptions, an attention governed by an aim, which aim 
 presupposes an intellectual being, capable of knowing such 
 aim, and so of proposing it to himself. By reflection, 
 therefore, ideas of relation are formed, and ideas grouped 
 (synthesis) or segregated (analysis). And when wc use 
 reflection to analyze an idea and to separate what is 
 common in it from what is proper, then we perform that 
 operation which is called abstraction. All these are func- 
 tions of reflection " {N'ew Essay, vol. ii. §§ 488, 489 ; cf.
 
 l86 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 § 511, n.). "Reflection adds light and perception to 
 human knowledge. Hence, while philosophic science has, 
 on the one hand, the disadvantage of being very liable to 
 error, it has, on the other, the advantage of being furnished 
 with a light and a perception immensely superior to those 
 of popular knowing, if it arrives at truth. Reflection . . . 
 is moved by instinct and by will, but we may say simply 
 by will, because this always co-operates, at least, in the 
 way of habits or negatively. Hence the will, right or 
 wrong, guides reflection to error or to truth " {Ibid., vol. iii. 
 § 1373 ; cf. Logic, §§ 998, 999). 
 
 70. 
 
 Perception ^^ demonstrating that we have an infallible 
 
 Riflection faculty of perception, we have disposed of the 
 
 rendered sceptics. In reflection, indeed, there is the pos- 
 
 Lo'^fc sibility of error, inasmuch as it is veracious or 
 
 mendacious according to the use we make of it ; 
 
 but Logic was invented for the very purpose of 
 
 showing us how to use it, so that it might lead 
 
 us to truth, and show us how to recognize and 
 
 avoid error. 
 
 The place of Logic in a system of science is shown in 
 the following passage : — " As being, which is the term of 
 intelligences, has three modes — reality, intelligibility, and 
 morality [see § 166], so also the intelligent subject has 
 three modes of uniting itself to being. It may unite itself 
 as a real with a real, as an intelligent with an intelligible, 
 or as a being endowed with will with an object willed. . . . 
 The real union forms the subject of a Physiology of the 
 soul, which is a part of Anthropology. The spiritual union 
 forms the subject of the Moral and Etidcemonistic Sciences. 
 The union of the intelligent with the intelligible is the 
 subject of Ideology and Logic. Ideology treats of the
 
 LOGIC THE REMEDY FOR ERROR. 187 
 
 union of the human spirit with intelligible being under 
 the forms of idea and concept, and hence deals with the 
 nature of idea and concept. And since there is a first 
 idea, which is being itself in its ideal form, Ideology shows 
 where evidence, and hence, where the supreme criterion, 
 lies. Hence in Ideology is contained the germ of Logic, 
 which teaches in what way the human spirit, in possession 
 of the idea, may still more closely unite itself with in- 
 telligible being, that is, with truth, by means of the develop- 
 ment of that being, and how it may avoid errors on the 
 way" {Logic, § 1099). "The mediator, so to speak, be- 
 tween pure and applied science is Logic " {New Essay, 
 vol. iii. § 1464 ; cf. above, under § 52). 
 
 7T. 
 
 Let us observe here that error always depends Error is 
 upon the will, and is, for that reason, never the vokiry. 
 product of the mere faculties of cognition. Re- does not, 
 flection never gives birth to error of itself, but demali^y,^' 
 always because we make it say what it does not error!'^^ 
 say. Indeed, the original objects of reflection are 
 perceptions, which, as we saw, cannot contain 
 error. This first reflection merely tells us what 
 is contained in one or more perceptions ; it merely 
 analyzes and recomposes. But if the reflection 
 said that the perceptions contained what they did 
 not contain, it would not then, properly speaking, 
 be reflection, since it would not reflect upon per- 
 ceptions ; it would be another power simulating 
 reflection — it would be a liar saying that reflection 
 asserted what it did not assert. This liar is, of 
 course, ourselves. We have the faculty of affirm- 
 ing what reason does not tell us. This is the
 
 188 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 The 
 
 faculty of 
 conviction 
 does not 
 always 
 depend, as 
 it should, 
 on that of 
 reasoning. 
 Hence 
 error. 
 
 Various 
 
 causes 
 
 which 
 
 produce 
 
 conviction 
 
 in spite of 
 
 reasoninsr. 
 
 Error, 
 
 though 
 
 always 
 
 voluntary, 
 
 is not 
 
 always 
 
 culpable. 
 
 faculty of persuasion, which must be clearly dis- 
 tinguished from the faculty of reasoning. Reason- 
 ing is and ought to be a means of persuasion. 
 But persuasion is likewise formed independently 
 of it. We often have an inner persuasion that 
 there is reasoning when there is not — that reason- 
 ing says something which it does not say. Our 
 persuasion, assent and judgment are not always 
 due to reason, but sometimes to instinct, habit, 
 prejudice, affection, passion. Thus error insinu- 
 ates itself into rational beings, not because they 
 are rational (if they were purely rational, they 
 would be incapable of error), but because, besides 
 the faculty of reason, they have the faculty of 
 judging arbitrarily. For this reason, we say that 
 it is the nature of error to be voluntary. It does 
 not follow from this that error is always sinful or 
 culpable ; it does, however, always partake of the 
 moral characteristics of the causes which pro- 
 duced it. 
 
 On the nature of persuasion, see under § 5. Error 
 Rosmini defines as " a reflection in which the understand- 
 ing, turning back upon what it has cognized, voluntarily 
 denies its assent to the same, and inwardly affirms that it 
 has learnt something else than what it actually has learnt " 
 {New Essay, vol. iii. § 1285). He elsewhere calls it "a 
 consequence which does not result from the premises " 
 {Ibid., § 1293). "The occasional causes of error," he says, 
 " are two : first, the similarity which the false has to the 
 true ; and, second, the inclination of the will to give assent 
 to that which resembles the truth, because it suits the 
 inclination itself" {Ibid., § 1290).
 
 VARIOUS REMEDIES FOR ERROR. 
 
 ^2. 
 
 It IS the province of Lome to enumerate the Three 
 
 1 r 1 1 1 kinds of 
 
 occasions and causes of error, and to show how remedies 
 
 • 1 1 T • 1 1 • 1 against 
 
 they may be avoided. It is clear that, in order error, cor- 
 
 . , - , , , responding 
 
 to avoid culpable errors, we must nave recourse to its three 
 
 ■, . 1 1 1 T sources. 
 
 to moral preventives ; we must heal the dis- 
 ordered will, when it leads the faculty of convic- 
 tion astray to its own culpable ends. The 
 physical causes of error, morbid instincts, disorder 
 of imagination, etc., must be removed by physical 
 remedies. Lastly, if error proceeds from pre- 
 cipitancy or imprudence, we must meet it by 
 prudential measures, by logical rules precisely 
 expressed. 
 
 72>- 
 
 Logic does not content itself with merely Sophistic. 
 indicating the various ways in which the causes of 
 error may be removed, but likewise shows how 
 errors may be detected and corrected after they 
 are committed. The characteristics of error are 
 very numerous. One class of these is to be 
 found in the verbal expression of reasoning, and 
 the branch of Logic which points out such symp- 
 toms of error is called Sophistic [cro^tcrTiKr^']. 
 
 " Sophisms," says Rosmini, " are apparent arguments. 
 They imitate the form of argumentation ; but, by erring in 
 some essential part of it, they fail to draw any cogent or 
 true conclusion. . , . Sophisms are divisible into three 
 classes : first, those which have their foundation in the
 
 190 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 falsity of the matter, that is, of the propositions which form 
 the premises of the syllogism ; second, those which sin 
 against the form of the syllogism ; and, third, those whose 
 falsity results not so much from the particular argumenta- 
 tion as from the intent of the dispute" {Logic, § 710). 
 Rosmini devotes a section of his Logic to a consideration of 
 the various forms of sophism, Book ii. sect. iii. pp. 281-304 
 His definition of Sophistic corresponds closely with that 
 given by Aristotle : ""E(t-< -yojO 17 crocpicTTiKri (^aivofiivr) (jotpin 
 ovaa S' oil, Kfu 6 aocpiarriQ \pr)fxaTicrT}]g cnro (paivo/uLivrig ao(l>iag 
 aXX ovK ovang" {Top., ix. I ; 165a, 21 sqq.). 
 
 More on 
 percep- 
 tion. 
 
 Analysis of 
 
 corporeal 
 
 sensations. 
 
 74- 
 
 But let us return to perception, the solid basis 
 of all knowledge in so far as it has real beings for 
 its object. 
 
 Any felt activity is sufficient to make the in- 
 tellig"ent mind affirm that a real beings subsists. 
 Activity (felt) and reality are the same thing. 
 Reality is a form of being, not being itself. The 
 latter is added in the act of perception. The first 
 felt activities which rouse our faculty of judgment 
 and make us affirm the subsistence of certain 
 beings are corporeal feelings {sensioniy If we ana- 
 lyze these feelings, we find in each of them three 
 activities : first, the activity which modifies us 
 without our wills, and toward which we are passive; 
 second, the sensation which is the effect of that 
 activity ; and, third, ourselves who are modified. 
 At first, indeed, the attention of our intelligence, 
 instead of dividing itself equally between these 
 three, concentrates itself upon the first, so that our 
 first affirmation is that there are external bodies.
 
 INTELLECTUAL ATTENTION. 191 
 
 When we affirm the existence of external bodies, 
 there is in our sensation something more than the 
 external bodies, that is, than the agent which 
 modifies us ; nevertheless we do not advert to it 
 or become aware of it. And here we must 
 observe the law of mental attention. Intellectual Law of in- 
 
 tcllcct 113.1 
 
 attention is the force which directs our understand- attention. 
 ing. This force is characterized by having the 
 power of applying the understanding to any object 
 it chooses, of restricting it to a single object or 
 to one part of a feeling, and of affirming one object 
 at a time, to the exclusion of all the rest. We 
 must not, however, suppose that, when attention 
 directs and applies the understanding to a sphere 
 more or less restricted, it proceeds by mere chance. 
 On the contrary, it follows certain fixed laws, im- 
 posed upon it, for the most part, by the nature of 
 being. This, however, is not the place to speak 
 of these laws. It is enough to give prominence to 
 the fact that, in virtue of this faculty, perception 
 limits itself to a single object, however many there 
 may be even necessarily connected with it. The The 
 
 r ^ ' ^ • necessary 
 
 necessary nexus 01 two objects does not enter mto nexus oi 
 
 . . •■ ^1 objects 
 
 the perception, or even mto that concept 01 the does not 
 being which is immediately derived from percep- percep- 
 tion. Thus, when I affirm the existence of an 
 external body and thereby perceive it, I do not 
 necessarily, with the same perception, affirm either 
 myself or the act of perception. Fichte is there- 
 fore in error when he says that we perceive the 
 Ego and the non-Ego contemporaneously and in 
 the same act.
 
 192 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Of the three activities intellectually distinguishable in 
 feeling {seiisione) Rosmini would confine the term sensation 
 to the third. " We have reserved the word sensation^' he 
 says, "to mark simply the sentient subject in so far as it 
 feels, using the phrase sensitive perception of bodies to 
 designate the same sensation, in so far as it is a passion 
 [7r«0oc], which, as such, has necessarily a relation to some- 
 thing external and different from the sentient subject. 
 YiorxcQ., first, sensitive perception of bodies, and, second, i^itel- 
 lective perception. Now, in the case of sensitive perception 
 . . . our spirits seize and envelop the bodies themselves, 
 which is not true of intellective perception, except in so far 
 as it presupposes the other as matter. . . . Sensitive perception 
 is an element (the matter^ which enters into intellective 
 perception. Intellective perception, therefore, composed of 
 matter and form, cannot be said to resemble sejisitive per- 
 ception, because the latter is not co-ordinate with the former — 
 but subordinate to it — an element, not a copy, of it " (New 
 Essay, vol. ii. § 453, nn,). 
 
 In regard to the order of perception and the fact that, in 
 external perception, we are not obliged to perceive our- 
 selves, Rosmini lays down three propositions, viz., "first, 
 experience demonstrates that every action of a limited 
 being has a term, either external to such being, or, at least, 
 distinct from the beginning of the action ; . . . second, if 
 every fresh action of beings proceeds from within and is 
 directed outwards, this must be true also of the action 
 which the human intellect performs in perceiving ; third, 
 the term of perception is its object, and the object of per- 
 ception means that which we perceive and cognize in per- 
 ception." He then adds : " Hence follows the corollary 
 that what is perceived in the act of perception is the object 
 of the same, neither more nor less. If, indeed, we should 
 perceive anything else besides the object of perception, 
 this thing would at once be object by the very definition. 
 Hence, man, the intellective being, does not, with his first 
 perception, perceive himself, but only something else that is 
 presented to him as object. This is confirmed by experience. 
 Man .perceives himself only by a reflected movement, in
 
 TERM AND OBJECT. 193 
 
 which he turns back upon himself ; the external world, on 
 the contrary, he perceives with a direct perception, in which, 
 so to speak, he leaves and forgets himself, to go out and 
 cognize the world in which his perception terminates, and 
 in which he becomes limited by the limitation of his object. 
 As, therefore, the external world is not the percipient Ego^ 
 so the perception of the external world and that of the 
 Ego are two perceptions essentially distinct ; and it is 
 impossible for a man to perceive these two objects for the 
 first time with one and the same perception, not only 
 because they are essentially distinct, but also because they 
 are presented to him by two essentially different feelings — 
 the one by an internal feeling, the other by external sensa- 
 tions. Whence it is that the act of perceiving in these two 
 perceptions has a contrary direction. The act of perceiving 
 the world goes from within outward ; that of perceiving the 
 Ego has a direction, so to speak, from within to within. 
 Now, since one and the same act cannot have two contrary 
 directions, it is absurd to say that a single first percep- 
 tion perceives the Ego and the \vorld in one. What may 
 have given occasion to this false belief is the confusion 
 between feeling and intellective perception " {Neiv Essay, 
 vol. iii. §§ 1433-1436). 
 
 We have already alluded to the distinction which Ros- 
 mini draws between ter7n and object (under §§ 15, 18). It 
 will be well here to make it more clear by giving his own 
 account of it. " No other faculty," he says, " except the 
 understanding, has for its term an object. By object we 
 understand a term seen in such a way that the seer sees 
 neither himself nor any relation to himself (that is, as 
 intuiting subject), and that himself . , . remains excluded 
 and forgotten, while the term stands by itself and appears 
 as existing in an absolute mode. It appears simply as 
 being {essente), and, although it is an intuited being, never- 
 theless, by merely looking at it, we cannot know or say that 
 it is intuited : in order to know this, we must perform an 
 act of reflection upon the intuition. This is the marvellous 
 property of the understanding, that which distinguishes it 
 from every other faculty, and especially from that of feeling. 
 
 o
 
 194 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 The faculty of feeling has for its term the felt. But the 
 felt involves an essential relation to the sentient, so that it 
 is impossible to conceive that the felt exists without 
 implicitly conceiving the sentient and its act. Hence the 
 felt is not object, but simple term, and the faculty of feeling 
 has not the essential property of the faculty of understand- 
 ing " {Logic, §§ 303-305). This is one of the most original, 
 characteristic, and important distinctions in the whole of 
 Rosmini's philosophy, and one that saves him from many 
 ambiguities into which other philosophers have fallen. 
 Without it, it is impossible to state the essential quality of 
 intelligence as distinct from sensation. To hear most 
 philosophers talk, one would suppose that sensation was 
 capable of distinguishing between subject and object, which, 
 if it were true, would render intelligence a superfluity. 
 Aristotle is guilty of this confusion. He speaks of the 
 objects of sense as well as of the objects of intelligence 
 (jraXiv av rig airop^amv £( to. avriKii/ieva Trporepa rovnov 
 L^i]Tr]Tiov, olov TO alG6i]-6v rov ala9i]TtKov koX to 
 voi]Tov rod vor^TiKov." De An.\. 1,7; 402 b, 14 sqq.). The 
 same confusion is the source of all the errors of Kant. 
 This philosopher says, "The faculty (receptivity) of receiving 
 representations in the way in which we are affected by 
 objects is called sense {Sijuilichkeit). By means of the 
 senses, therefore, objects are given to us, and it alone 
 furnishes us with intuitions ; by the understanding they 
 are thought, and from it spring concepts " {Kritik der 
 reinen Vern., pt. i. § l). Just as if things were objects 
 before they were thought or conceived ! It is needless to 
 say that the same confusion runs through nearly all modern 
 philosophy. 
 
 Source of Whence arises Fichte's error ? From not 
 
 Fichics 
 
 enor, havino^ carefully distinouished what takes place in 
 
 confusion . * ^ ^ . . \ 
 
 between feeling from what takes place in intellective per- 
 
 feeling . , , , . 
 
 and per- ception. It IS most truc that in our sensation 
 
 ception.
 
 FICHTE'S ERROR. 195 
 
 there is not only the external agent (the outer 
 world), but also the limitation and modification of 
 ourselves. This is the nature of corporeal feeling, 
 always double, made up of that which feels and 
 that which is felt. But feeling and intellective 
 perception are different in nature. Notwithstand- 
 ing that two beings concur in feeling, perception 
 limits itself to one of them at a time. It is by 
 this means that it distinguishes the one from the 
 other. Perception terminates in what it affirms ; 
 when it affirms the external world it terminates in 
 that. If the case were otherwise, it would con- 
 found the external world with itself, instead of 
 separating the two, as it does. I say separate, and 
 not distinguish. In order to separate the external Perception 
 world, it is enough to have perceived it and reflection 
 nothing else, whereas in order to distinguish it we guishes, its 
 must negate ourselves, which implies that we ^011^ 
 must have perceived ourselves, since we cannot °^ ^^^' 
 negate what we do not know. And it was nothing 
 else but the misuse of the word distinguish that 
 rendered Fichte's sophism plausible. The truth is 
 that, when we perceive one thing, entirely ignoring 
 all the rest, it is already thereby separated from 
 all the others, without our being obliged positively 
 to negate them or distinguish them from it. 
 Fichte's error, therefore, arose from a confusion 
 between feeling and sense-perception — another 
 error to be laid at the door of sensism. 
 
 " Fichte, a disciple of Kant's," says Rosmini, " undertook 
 to evolve everything from the subject. . . . Kant had 
 divided the activity of the spirit into so many forms or
 
 196 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 partial activities. He had even admitted passivity in 
 thought (perhaps without observing that he did so), and had 
 excluded from it noilmeiia, things as they are in themselves. 
 Fichte concentrated anew the action of thought, considered 
 it in its unity, and propounded the doctrine that everything 
 was pure activity. In this system the activity of the Ego 
 was the beginning, the middle, and the end of the philo- 
 sophy which was called Transcendental Idealism. The Ego^ 
 according to Fichte, posits itself, which is equivalent to, 
 creates itself But this first act, which the Ego performs 
 in positing itself, though simple, is, nevertheless, complex. 
 The Ego does not posit itself without positing, in oppo- 
 sition to itself, the non-Ego. This identical act, which 
 renders it conscious of itself, is that which renders it con- 
 scious of the external world and the things outside of 
 itself, collected under the designation of non-Ego, or, to 
 speak more correctly, the act which renders it conscious of 
 something different from itself renders it also conscious of 
 itself. Now, to be self-conscious, in this system, is the same 
 thing as to be. Before being conscious, therefore, the Ego 
 is not, since the essence of the Ego is to be conscious. The 
 Ego, therefore, by the act of its own consciousness, posits, 
 creates itself.* But the act of its own consciousness, which 
 constitutes the Ego, cannot, according, to Fichte, take place 
 without the act whereby the external world, or the otJier of 
 the subject Ego, that is, the non-Ego, is known. Hence in 
 the first act of the Ego, in that first act in which the Ego 
 feels itself, it also feels, or, to use Fichte's expression, thinks, 
 the eternal world. All that man knows is the Ego and the 
 non-Ego. Now, the non-Ego does not exist before the Ego, 
 but at the same time with it. ... ' The act of my spirit,' 
 said Fichte, justly, 'is anterior to the fact of consciousness. 
 We must not, therefore, set out with the fact of conscious- 
 
 * In a note to this, Rosmini says, " Fichte's error here consists in not having 
 observed that the first act whereby the Ego exists, and, in general, the first 
 act whereby anything exists, though an act of the thing itself, is nevertheless an 
 act created by a cause antecedent to the thing." It is almost incredible now- 
 adays, but Fichte actually says, "The Ego originally absolutely posits its own 
 being" {Gi-iindlage der gesamtnten U'issenschaftslehfe, Leipzig, 1794, p. 13. 
 On page 1 1 may be found some of the most puerile logical fallacies on record).
 
 FICHTE'S ERROR. 197 
 
 ness, but with the activity of the thought, which returns 
 upon itself, that is, upon its own consciousness.' . . . But 
 here there is a manifest ambiguity. The point of departure 
 of the reasoning and the point of departure of the human 
 spirit are two different things.* Reasoning cannot set out 
 from anything but the fact of consciousness, because rea- 
 soning, especially philosophic reasoning, sets out, not from 
 what a man knows, but from what he observes or knows 
 that he knows. Now, the chronological order of observatkms 
 or reflections ... is the inverse of that of direct conscioiis- 
 ness.\ Man, therefore, reflects first on the fact of his own 
 consciousness, and then on the act by which he reflects : 
 hence this reflexive act of the spirit is observed after, 
 although it exists before, the observance of the act of con- 
 sciousness. The first thing, therefore, observed by the 
 philosopher who meditates on himself is the fact of con- 
 sciousness ; this, therefore, is the point of departure in 
 reasoning. But afterwards the philosopher asks himself, 
 ' How did I observe the fact of my own consciousness.-*' 
 Then he replies to himself, ' By an act of reflection on it.' 
 This act of reflection, therefore, is a point of departure in 
 thought higher than the fact of consciousness known by 
 reflection. 
 
 " Be it observed, I have said, ' a point of departure in 
 thojight,' not ' a point of departure in the spirit.' This 
 distinction escaped Fichte's notice. He set out from the 
 reflection of the thought upon itself, as the first radical 
 act whereby all the acts of the human spirit may be 
 explained. Hence he reduced everything to thought 
 and even confounded thought and feeling, . . . which 
 shows that even in the bowels of Transcendental Idealism 
 sensism has laid its egg. If Fichte had not made this 
 confusion, he would not have used this formula to indicate 
 the point of departure of the human spirit, ' the activity 
 of thought which reflects upon itself,' but would have used 
 this other, ' the activity of thought which falls upon 
 
 * See under § 9, where four points of departure are distinguished, 
 t Cf. Aristotle, " ou yap ravjhv irporepoy ttj (pvaei Kal irphs 7]fia.s ■irp6T(pov, 
 oiiSe yvoipijxwTipov koX rifuv yvaipi/xurfpov" {A/ia/. Fosi,, i. I ; 7' t), 34 sq.).
 
 198 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 feeling,* and in this latter it would have been impossible 
 for him to place the point of departure of the spirit, 
 because he would at once have observed that feeling must 
 precede the act of thought which observes it. On the 
 other hand, 'the thought which reflects upon itself,' as 
 the point of departure of the human spirit, involves a 
 contradiction in terms, inasmuch as it makes the thought 
 which reflects identical with the thought upon which the 
 reflection is made. It, therefore, concentrates and confounds 
 the active and the passive in a single essence, even making 
 the passive active and the active passive, which is a clear 
 contradiction. . . . 
 
 "If Fichte had been properly acquainted with the act 
 of reflection, he would have seen that no act really returns 
 upon itself, but always upon a previous act, which becomes 
 its object. Let us consider an act of reflection. This 
 returns upon another act, which may likewise be an act of 
 reflection, in which case this latter is likewise reflected upon 
 another act, and so on. Finally, however, we must come 
 to an act of first reflection, and this must reflect itself upon 
 a direct act of thought, otherwise we should go on ad infi- 
 nitum, which is absurd. Now, the direct act of thought is 
 inticition and perception. Perception is an act of thought 
 in which are united tvv^o affections : first, corporeal sensation ; 
 second, the intuition of universal being. Previously, there- 
 fore, to any reflection, there exist feeling and intuition, 
 which are the foundation of everything ; in other words, 
 first, an intellective intuition ; second, a corporeal sensation. 
 And these two affections, united by the single activity of 
 the spirit, form the most simple perception, and upon this 
 the reflection of thought begins to act. But this analysis 
 was omitted by Fichte, and herein, in my opinion, lies the 
 source of his errors. 
 
 " When I perform an act with my thought, with this 
 act I know the object in which my act terminates ; but the 
 act itself remains unknown to me. In order that I may 
 know it, I must perform a second reflex act on the first act, 
 so that the latter may become an object ; but then, in the 
 same way, the second reflex act remains unknown to me.
 
 KNOWLEDGE AND CONSCIOUSNESS. 199 
 
 If I reflect on the second act, I perform a third act, 
 enabling me to know the second, which makes itself the 
 object of the third, but not to know itself ; and in this way 
 we may go on as long as we choose, so that we may lay 
 down, as the law of our manner of knowing, this great 
 canon : Every act of our understanding makes us know the 
 object in which it terminates, but no act makes us know 
 itself* Seeing that this is the case, we are met with the 
 question : Are we not, then, conscious in the act by which 
 we know an object ? We must observe that this question 
 differs from this other : In the act in which we know an 
 object have we a feeling ? To have consciousness is to have 
 knowledge of an act as ours, that is, of our act, and, at 
 the same time, of ourselves as performing it. And this 
 knowledge we cannot have save through another act of 
 reflection. Feeling, on the contrary, does not require any 
 operation on our part ; but feeling is blind. Most men, 
 however, find it impossible to persuade themselves that we 
 may perform an act without even having a consciousness of 
 it.t The reason why most men. think in this way is, that 
 
 * It follows from this that the first act of knowledge, viz. , intuition, is not 
 knowledge, that is, does not know itself. 
 
 f Sir W. Hamilton says, " An act of knowledge may be expressed by 
 the formula / kno-v, an act of consciousness by the formula / knoio that I 
 knmv; but as it is impossible for us to know without at the same time knowing 
 that we know ; so it is impossible to know that we know without our actually 
 knowing." That the former of these acts is impossible is clearly not true. 
 Sir William overlooked the fact that to know, and to know that we know, are 
 two distinct and separate acts. Children know very many things ; but so long 
 as they do not clearly know what knowing is, they cannot know that they 
 know. Much confusion has arisen from confounding consciousness of know- 
 ledge with knowledge itself. Herbert Spencer, who is fond of confounding 
 the different acts of the mind, says, in so many words, " To be conscious is to 
 think ; to think is to put together impressions and ideas " {Principles of Psy- 
 chology, vol. ii. ch. xxvi. § 377). Now, if to think be merely to put together 
 impressions and ideas, it is plain that the impressions and ideas themselves are 
 not thought, and that we are not conscious of them. Thinking consciousness, 
 therefore, is the putting together of things that are unknown. In this view, 
 consciousness would be a mere mechanical force acting blindly, and ideas 
 having an existence outside of it and independent of it, would become real 
 entities — in a word, Platonic ideas. But any one who has ever seriously 
 reflected upon mental processes knows that all consciousness takes the form of 
 judgment, and that judgment is the analysis of a synthesis formed previously 
 in thought but outside of consciousness. Consciousness, therefore, is only one
 
 200 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 when we perform an act with our minds (spirit), we can at 
 once reflect on it and observe it, or, at least, we think we 
 can, and this act which we perform in reflecting and ob- 
 serving we are not aware of. Hence we have a tendency 
 to believe that this act of our minds is observed and known 
 by itself, and not by an act superadded by us ; whereas the 
 truth is that, in itself, it is unknown and unobserved, although 
 at the moment we can, or think we can, at our pleasure, 
 render it known to us by reflecting on it, and so observe it. 
 Now, Fichte knew most clearly this error into which most 
 men fall ; but, to avoid it, he ran into the opposite extreme. 
 He was not satisfied with saying that this act of our minds 
 was not observed and reflected on through itself, but 
 affirmed that it did not exist at all. He, therefore, gave 
 to the reflection of the mind an activity to produce it, and 
 even tried to identify it . . . with reflection itself. We, on 
 the other hand, affirm that every act of the mind exists 
 even before being reflected upon and known, but only as 
 a feeling. Hence in any act of the intelligent spirit 
 there is an idea and there is a feeling. The object intuited 
 is that which is illustrated and is termed idea; the act 
 whereby we perceive an object in our consciousness is a 
 blind feeling, and nothing more. Now, nothing is known 
 without an idea. Man, therefore, so long as he has only 
 feelings, really knows nothing, and, in particular, the con- 
 dition of man prior to reflection on himself is a condition 
 . . . which it is impossible to observe. For this reason, it 
 seems a state of pure non-existence, whereas it is merely a 
 state unknown to us. Hence Fichte, confounding the not- 
 known with the non-existent, said that the Ego, by a re- 
 flection of its own, posited itself with the same act with 
 which it posited the non-Ego. It is of no avail to say that 
 
 element in thought, one part of the process involved in it. When I think 
 or cognize a white horse, I do not first think the white, and then the 
 horse, and then put the two together in order to be conscious of them. I 
 think the white horse as a whole, and, in order to be conscious of what I 
 think, I analyze that whole into white and horse, and express the fact that I 
 have found them already ntiited, by saying, The horse is vohite. If I had to 
 put together the two elements, it would never occur to me to express that fact 
 by, The horse is white. I should say, " I have made a horse white."
 
 REFLECTION AN ACCIDENT. 201 
 
 the essence of the Ego consists in cognition or thinking, for 
 the Ego is originally not a thought of itself, but a feeling ; 
 and by making feeling absorb thought, without noting the 
 broad distinction between them, Fichte fell into all his 
 strange and profound mistakes. If, indeed, the intelligent 
 Ego has also an intellective feeling, it does not therewith ter- 
 minate in itself, but in universal being. And this elemen- 
 tary thought cannot be taken for Fichte's reflection, since it 
 has nothing reflex about it, and is the immovable and 
 perpetual part of man. Here, however, it seems that 
 Fichte made an approach to the truth, and caught a 
 distant glimpse of it, when he uttered the excellent words : 
 * While thoughts pass, there is in man an immutable part 
 which contemplates'" i^Neiv Essay, vol. iii. §§ 1388-1395). 
 
 " We must not confound the consciousness of the soul 
 with the soul itself. Still less ought we to confound 
 with the soul that act with which it says // or, again, we 
 must not confound the refleetioji of the soul with the soul 
 itself. Consciousness, Ego pronounced, reflection, are ac- 
 cidents, not the substance of the soul, which, as a reality, 
 is prior to all these its accidental modifications. The con- 
 fusion of these with the soul itself is the source of all the 
 aberrations and extravagances in which the German school 
 lost, and still goes on losing, itself. Reinhold having pro- 
 posed the principle of consciousness, Fichte reduced the 
 soul itself to consciousness, and thus converted it into a 
 reflection ; but since reflection is only an accident, all sub- 
 stance disappeared from his philosophy, and left in his 
 hand mere accidents. Hence he himself, at the end of all 
 his reasonings, came to the conclusion that ' No bein"- 
 exists, but merely images ; every reality is a dream, and 
 thought is the dream of that dream.' From this labyrinth, 
 German philosophy has never been able to extricate itself, 
 
 " Fichte began with this proposition, which contains the 
 error indicated, ' The Ego posits itself.' * The proposition 
 
 • '■^ Das Ich sctzt sich sdbst, und es ist, vermoge dieses blossen Setzens 
 durch sich selbst ; und umgekehrt : Das Ich ist, und es sctzt sein Seyn, 
 vermoge seines blossen Seyns. — Es ist zugleich das Ilandehide, und das 
 Produkt der Handhing ; das Thatige, und das was durch die Thatigkcit 
 hervorgebracht wird " {^Gi-undlagc der gesammtcn Wisscnchaftslekre, p. lo). 
 One can hardly blame Roamini for calling such talk "delirium."
 
 202 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 is manifestly absurd, because it supposes that the Eg 
 operates before it exists. Now, certainly no being can 
 posit, that is, create itself. He ought to have said, ' The 
 soul posits the Ego,' because this proposition would signify, 
 The soul affirms itself, and in so doing changes itself into 
 an Ego, because the Ego is the soul affirmed by itself. 
 Thus the Ego is distinguished from the soul, the Ego being 
 the soul invested with that reflection whereby it affirms 
 itself. Now, there is nothing strange in the soul's pro- 
 ducing this reflection ; but it is passing strange that the 
 soul should be the Ego, that is, the reflected soul, even 
 before it has made the reflection in question. At the same 
 time, since the man who philosophizes is already a fully 
 constituted Ego, it is, of course, by no means easy for him 
 to dissolve himself, so to speak, and to persuade himself 
 that his Ego is compound, that it is an accidental, and not 
 an essential, state of the soul, or, to speak more correctly, 
 that it is the soul constituted in accidental conditions " 
 {Psychology, vol. i. §§ 72-74). The definition of Soicl is 
 given further on (§§ 1 21-124). The definition of Ego runs 
 thus : " The Ego is an active principle in a given nature, 
 in so far as it has consciousness of itself, and pronounces 
 the act of consciousness" {Psychology, vol. i. § 55; cf. 
 Anthropology, §§ 768-805, sqq.). In order to be self- 
 conscious, that is, to be an Ego, the subject must have 
 combined the feeling of mcity {7)i£ita, what the Germans 
 call IcJihcif) with ideal being as intuited, and then, by re- 
 flection, have analyzed the object thus formed into the judg- 
 ment, " Meity is." But existent Meity is precisely what 
 we mean by Ego. Of course, the act whereby the subject 
 constitutes the Ego, by subsuming itself under being, is in 
 its beginning unconscious. Its term is self-consciousness. 
 
 ^6. 
 
 Scheiiing's ^ proper understanding of the nature of per- 
 
 asJeriin-r ccption shows also the erroneousness of the 
 finite'^'' doctrine of Schclling, which has recently been
 
 SCHELLIXGS ERROR. 203 
 
 revamped and reproduced. Schellinor accepted cannot be 
 
 '■ '- o> i perceived 
 
 Fichte's two objects of perception, and added a without 
 
 -' ^ ^ , the infinite. 
 
 third. Fichte's object of perception, though two- 
 fold, was finite. SchelHng affirmed that the finite 
 could not be perceived without the infinite with 
 which it was correlated. Now, Fichte attributed 
 to intellective perception what, in reality, belongs 
 to feeling. In like manner, Schelling attributed 
 to intellective per ceptio7t what belongs to reasoning. 
 Neither the one nor the other understood the Origin of 
 
 r. . ....... 1 ^ . , this error, 
 
 nature 01 perception, which limits itseli to a simple confusion 
 object, without being obliged to extend itself to intei- 
 the other objects connected with it. Perception p^erception 
 terminates in a finite object, without ever con- masoning. 
 sidering that it is finite, or that, in order to exist, 
 it requires an infinite. It terminates in its im- 
 mediate finite object, without considering that this 
 is an effect and, therefore, could not exist without 
 a cause. It considers it as a being, adding to it 
 the essence of being, without ever considering 
 that, but for this essence, it would not be. All 
 these are subsequent reflections, reasonings, which 
 have perception for their object indeed, but are 
 not themselves perception. 
 
 Rosmini devotes a good many pages of his Nexu Essay 
 to a discussion of Sclielling's system (vol. iii. §§ 1 396-1407) ; 
 but as it has vanished into thin air, along with many other 
 creations of the German philosophic brain, the criticism 
 need only be referred to.
 
 204 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 How 
 
 reasoning 
 finds the 
 limits, 
 contin- 
 gency, 
 etc., of 
 perceived 
 beings. 
 
 Schelling 
 saw dimly 
 but could 
 not express 
 the fact 
 that the 
 mind, 
 prior to all 
 reason- 
 ings, must 
 have 
 
 something 
 complete 
 and 
 universal. 
 
 11' 
 
 We have now shown that in perception we 
 perceive one object apart from all the rest. It 
 remains to be seen why, In spite of this, we sub- 
 sequently discover from reasoning that this par- 
 ticular object, this reality, cannot subsist by itself, 
 and that, if it Is finite, it Is necessarily conditioned 
 by an infinite ; if it Is contingent, by a necessary, 
 which is Its cause, etc., etc. This happens be- 
 cause reflection, turning back upon the object 
 perceived, compares it with the essence of being, 
 which Is the light of the mind, and, in so doing, 
 recognizes that in that object the essence of being 
 is not fully realized. It thereby recognizes that 
 the subsistence of this object Is conditioned by 
 another orreater belnor. It is clear from this that 
 the last- mentioned German philosopher had a 
 glimpse of a truth, without being able to state it 
 with precision. He saw that the human mind 
 must, from the very beginning of its reasonings, 
 have present to it something full, complete, uni- 
 versal, to which, as to a type, It could refer that 
 which Is modal, incomplete, relative ; otherwise it 
 would be impossible to explain how we ever came 
 to be aware that the world, for example, is con- 
 tingent and requires a cause, that it Is finite, 
 in other words, immeasurably removed from the 
 infinite, etc., etc. Of course. In order to know 
 this, the mind must possess the perfect type of 
 being to base these judgments upon. But the 
 German philosopher was not able to distinguish
 
 //OIF WE KNOW THE INFINITE. 205 
 
 intuition from perception, the ideal mode of being 
 from the real mode, the essence of being from Its 
 realization, the ground of subsistence from sub- 
 sistence itself, that which has being, because it 
 receives it from perception, from that which is 
 being. He, accordingly, attributed to pe7'ception 
 what belongs to intuitiofi or else to the com- 
 parison of the peixeived with the intuited, which 
 is the work of reasoning. He concluded that 
 the human mind naturally perceives the absolute, 
 whereas it only perceives the absohUe ground, 
 ideal being. And inasmuch as in perception we 
 hold beings apart, and limiting distinctions belong 
 to the order of reality, he held that, in what he 
 supposed to be primitive and natural perception, 
 Ego, non-Ego, and absolute being were already 
 distinguished, whereas the truth is that in ideal 
 being there is no distinction, no limitation, no 
 mode. It is being, in one unlimited form. In 
 spite of this, ideal being is sufficient for the mind, 
 not only because it renders possible the perception 
 of particular things, but also because it enables it 
 by reasoning to know the limits of the objects of 
 perception and the necessity of the infinite and 
 the absolute. 
 
 The error which RosminI here criticizes is the one with 
 which his own system has most frequently been charged, 
 viz., that it makes the absolute the form of human reason, 
 and thereby results in pure pantheism. There is certainly 
 no error against which Rosmini has more carefully and 
 completely guarded himself Not only has he repeatedly 
 declared that pantheism is an erroneous and absurd system 
 {T/teos., vol. i. § 457 ; New Essaj, vol. iii. § ii/^, n. 3) ; but
 
 2o6 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 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 iappartenenza) 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 ' " * {Neiu Essay, vol. iii. 
 § 1 178). Rosmini writes a whole article to show that 
 " The self-manifest being, communicated to man, is not 
 God." t In another place he says, " Object being, thinkable 
 being, self-intelligible being, are expressions almost synony- 
 mous. Hence the self-intelligible is merely ideal being; 
 real being is INTELLIGIBLE BY participation [fxtOi'iti]. To 
 this principle there is a single exception, and even it is not 
 properly an exception : God, even in his reality, is self- 
 intelligible. Now, this happens because in his ideal essence 
 subsistence is included ; whence it cannot happen that sub- 
 sistence 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 reaH Be- 
 cause, 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 libera Arbih-io, ii. 15. 
 
 t Theosophy, vol. iv. ch. vi. art. I, §§ 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 del/a Lilosofia promossa dalF Enciclica 
 Aetcrni Patris di SS. Leone Papa XIIL, Commentario per Giovanni Maria 
 Cornoldi. Bologna, 1880). If the philosophy of Rosmini must be con- 
 demned, 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.
 
 PERCEPTION OF EXTERNAL BODIES. 207 
 
 can only infer the existence of such a ncx?is 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 {intellectd) to the 
 intellectual light, abstracting the intelligible forms from all 
 the obscurity caused by material appendages, and placing 
 them in its own simple being." f 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.) 
 
 But now vi^e must clear up better the laws of Defence 
 perception and reasoning, and arm them effectually of perc'ep- 
 
 , , . . f. . _ , , tion and 
 
 agamst the objections ot sceptics. Let us begin reasoning 
 with the perception of external bodies. At the objections 
 
 11 r .of sceptics. 
 
 moment when we become aware 01 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. 
 
 t "Intellectus agens, qui est lux, est imago at similitudo quredam primne 
 causae, sive Dei, cujus virtute anima intellecta agit ad lumen intellectuale, 
 abstrahens formas intellectas ab omni obumbrationeab appenditiis materialibus 
 causata, et ponens eas in simplici esse sue " i^De N^atura et Oi'igitte Aiii/iia; ii. 
 tr. 15, q. 93, m. 2). The last word here is ambiguous. 
 
 X " Secundum quod anima statsub luce intelligentiae causae primce, sic fluit 
 ab ea intellectus agens " {lbid.,iY. 13, q. 77, m. 3). In the language of the 
 Arabs there is nothing equivalent to the distinction between intellectus and intelU- 
 gentia ; but in the Latin translations of their works intellectus is used to mean 
 vov Sit/afits or possible intellect, intclligcntia, to mean vovs itoiririKos or active 
 . intellect. See Brenlano, Die Fsychologie aes Aristotclcs, p. 8, n. 20.
 
 2oS 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 In external 
 sensation 
 we feel 
 within us 
 a force 
 which is 
 not our- 
 selves. 
 This 
 
 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 beinof 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 say that, even if our intellectual attention does 
 not fix itself at all upon ourselves, but concen- 
 trates 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- 
 sary to suppose the contrary. 
 
 Rosmini divides the objects of knowledge as follows : — 
 (i) those which we perceive ; (2) those which we represent 
 to ourselves by intellective imagination. " The beings dif- 
 ferent from ourselves which we perceive are — (i) our sub- 
 jective 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 intelli- 
 gence 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 07ie 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-
 
 SUBJECTIVE AND EXTRA-SUBJECTIVE. 209 
 
 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. § 1 188), 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 extra- 
 subjective 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-sub- 
 jective and the objective is very great. 
 
 79- 
 Now, this peculiarity of perception, that it is rerception 
 always limited to a single being, which therefore bridge 
 can never be confounded with others, enables uSusanT^he 
 to explain how we know the corporeal world. worW,^ 
 The difficulties advanced by the idealists all arose d"fficuUies 
 from considering bodies apart from perception, aris?fnM™ 
 from not knowing the nature of perception, and |^°"^^'j',^^'"'' 
 from neo^lectinor to analyze it. Of course, if the^^'°'''^r 
 
 <=> o «' ' apart from 
 
 world be looked at apart from all relation to per- percep- 
 
 ^ ^ tion. 
 
 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 reahty regarded as separate froni 
 being, which is its cogniz<ibihty. Nothing is neitlier capable of being united 
 with being, nor, as a consequence, of being cognized. Nothing is the unthink- 
 able.
 
 210 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 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 whicli 
 constitutes the possibility which we have of going out of 
 ourselves, so to speak ; that is, of thinking of things difterent 
 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 
 oict and bridge of comuiunication, 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, there- 
 fore, 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 he 
 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. Tlie question, How can we be sure of what is outside of us ? was pro- 
 pounded 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."
 
 ORIGIN OF THE CONCEPT OF BODY. 211 
 
 from the first moment of its existence, has the capacity for 
 thinking things as they are in themselves, and not as they 
 are in us. It has the concept of this difference, of exte- 
 riority, or, more correctly, of the objectivity of things. It 
 remains to be seen how it can pass from the conception of a 
 thing in itself merely possible to a thing really existing in 
 itself and not in the spirit" {Neiv Essay, vol. iii. §§ 108 1, 
 1082 ; cf. vol, ii. §§ 842-884). 
 
 80. 
 Perception, when properly studied and analyzed, Perception 
 
 yields the 
 
 yields an ontological truth of the greatest value, important 
 
 . . ontological 
 
 and one altogether unknown to the sensists, viz., truth that 
 
 , , . . , . . . beings, in 
 
 that one being can enter with its action into so far as 
 another ; that beings, in so far as they are agents, may exist 
 may exist in each other without mingling or con-oufeT^ 
 founding themselves with each other, remaining Jntel-^ 
 altogether distinct, by reason of the opposite '^^'"g^^"g- 
 relations of activity and passivity. In the per- 
 ception of bodies we feel an agent which is not 
 ourselves and toward which we are passive. This 
 is the basis of the proof that there exists an 
 extended being different from us, that is, body. 
 
 Rosmini's definition of body is : "Body is a force dif- 
 fused in extension or space ;" and of force : " Force is what 
 produces a passion in feeling or in its extended term " 
 {Psychology, vol. i. § 51). Elsewhere he says, "I designate 
 ... by the term body the subject of sensible qualities, that 
 is, of those virtues which produce in us sensations. Hence 
 body is the subject of extension, figure, solidity, colour, taste, 
 etc., in so far as these qualities are found in bodies, that is, 
 as virtues capable of producing in us the corresponding 
 sensations. Now, these virtues or sensible qualities are the 
 proximate causes of our sensations. We ma}-, therefore,
 
 212 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 define body as the proximate cause of sensations and the 
 subject of sensible qualities. Even if it were true that 
 bodies did not exist, still this definition expresses the idea 
 which men have of body " {Neiv Essay, vol. ii. § ^Gy). 
 
 " Our bodies, . . . considered as associated with sentient 
 jw/yrr/i", have extension in common with the external bodies 
 which are purely felt agents. The community which these 
 two classes of bodies have in extension forms the passage 
 from the idea of the one to the idea of the other — the 
 bridge of communication between them. With the same 
 act whereby we perceive the mode of existence of our own 
 bodies, we likewise perceive the mode of existence of 
 external bodies. This consequence is of great importance. 
 Indeed, we have shown bodies to be made up of two 
 elements : first, an action performed on us ; second, an 
 extension in which that action diffuses itself and ter- 
 minates. Now, our bodies exert a continuous internal 
 action upon us, that is, occasion the fundamental feeling* 
 and this effect of the agent is expanded in extension. 
 Here, therefore, we have both the essential elements of 
 the essence of body, so that the perception of our own 
 bodies is not liable to doubt, and the existence of these is 
 as certain as the fact of consciousness. 
 
 " We now come to the perception of external body. In 
 the first place, we feel an action performed in us ; but the 
 first effect of this action is merely a modification of the 
 fundamental feeling. By this effect alone we do not go out 
 of ourselves ; we feel only our own bodies as before, 
 although in a new way (with an accidental sensation). We 
 may, indeed, from this infer a cause ; but this is still 
 unknown, because thus far we have only an indeterminate 
 action. This alone would not suffice to make us perceive a 
 body outside of us. What more, then, is requisite .'' The 
 action in question must be likewise extended. Then we 
 shall have perceived an agent in extension, which is the 
 notion of body. Now, how have we been able to perceive 
 the extension of said agent .''... We habitually feel ex- 
 tension, that is, the expansion of the fundamental feeling. 
 
 * See lieluw, under § 132.
 
 THE FUNDAMENTAL FEELING. 213 
 
 We were able, therefore, also to feel the extension of the 
 external agent, when this agent diffuses its action in the 
 same extension as the fundamental feeling. For this 
 purpose it was arranged that the surface of the extension 
 of the fundamental feeling and the surface of the extension 
 of the external body should coincide, that is, should unite 
 so as to form the same surface, and that in one surface 
 we should, in a wonderful way, experience two feelings. 
 Hence, in that surface in which the fundamental feeling 
 diffuses itself and terminates, the action of the external 
 body comes to exert and extend its action, so that the 
 same consciousness testifies to us that that action conies 
 from without, and that it is also performed in an extension 
 which was already naturally felt by us. Thus we perceive, 
 first, an external action ; second, the surface in which this 
 external action operates or terminates ; and in this way we 
 perceive the two essential properties of body, common to 
 our own and to the external body. Hence we ascertain 
 that there are two bodies, and that both have the same 
 corporeal nature, although they exert upon us such 
 different effects. In this way we see that the extra-sub- 
 jective perception of bodies is based upon subjective per- 
 ception. The first element of extra-subjective perception 
 is a force which modifies us. This force we perceive in its 
 act, along with the subjective modification of the funda- 
 mental feeling, in that species of violence which is exerted 
 upon us. The second element is extension, an extension 
 which we feel naturally — that, namely, of the fundamental 
 feeling. But since this is changed into extension, through 
 an external force applied to some point in it, we per- 
 ceive this force as extended in its term. Hence, . . . the 
 criterion of the perception of external body is, in the last 
 analysis, the perception of our own bodies " {Neiv Essay, 
 vol. ii. §§ 842-845),,
 
 214 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L S YS TEM. 
 
 Our per- 
 ception of 
 ourselves 
 is posterior 
 to our 
 perception 
 of the 
 external 
 world. 
 
 8i. 
 
 There comes a time in which we perceive our- 
 selves also. I am convinced that, although we 
 are always accompanied by feeling, our intellective 
 perception of ourselves is subsequent to our intel- 
 lective perception of bodies. Be this as it may, 
 the important thing for the philosopher to under- 
 stand clearly is, that our perception of ourselves is 
 different from our perception of bodies, and for 
 the simple reason that we are different from bodies. 
 One perception is not another, as truly as one 
 being is not another, nor does the perception of a 
 being require to establish its own identity by 
 positively negating other beings. All it has to do 
 is to affirm the being which constitutes its object, 
 and this object excludes all others by its very 
 nature, that is, because it is not the others. The 
 human mind has no need to take the trouble to 
 exclude them by a negation. 
 
 " The human subject feels materially, feels the extended, 
 and feels, as identified with the felt extended, its own 
 activity, which is made up of passivity and activity. The 
 same human subject intuites being, and, in intuited being, 
 feels indivisibly its own cognitive activity. Furthermore, 
 the human subject, single and simple as it is, unites the 
 felt with the understood. Through this union it sees that 
 the felt exists in the iindej-stood as being. It sees that 
 feeling forms an equation with the idea, that it is a real- 
 ization of the intuited being of the idea, and, hence, that 
 there is in it a sentient being or principle. The union, 
 therefore, which man forms between feeling and being, 
 produces for him the perception of the sentient principle,
 
 CONSTRUCTION OF THE EGO. 215 
 
 without which feeling itself would remain inexplicable to 
 him. In a similar way he discovers an intelligent prin- 
 ciple, when, instead of applying being to his own material 
 feeling, he applies it to his own cognition, to the intellective 
 perception of the feeling, and to intuited being itself Then 
 he sees the cognition and the perception in being, equates 
 these two terms, recognizes this cognition or perception as 
 simply being itself realized, and hence concludes, There is a 
 cognizant, a percipient, there is an intelligent principle ; 
 simply because there is cognition, perception, intellection. 
 Moreover, the human subject, in uniting and equating 
 feeling with the idea (or cognition with the idea), in re- 
 cognizing that they are the same being \_e7ite'\ under two 
 forms, that is, the ideal form and the real form, puts forth 
 a new activity. The activity which unites feeling and idea 
 is neither the activity which feels the extended, nor the 
 activity that intuites ideal being. It is a third activity, 
 uniting and reconciling the two former. This third activity 
 takes the felt extended, which is the product of the sen- 
 tient activity, and the intuited being furnished by the 
 intelligent activity, and puts together these two terms of 
 the sentient and intelligent activities, making one of them, 
 and so forming a single ideal-real being. This is what is 
 called intellective perception. Now, the human subject feels 
 also this third activity, and, in doing so, cannot help feeling 
 that it dominates the other two. In this way it feels that 
 these two depend upon it — that they, therefore, have a 
 common principle. He concludes that the sentient prin- 
 ciple and the intelligent principle are, in one and the same 
 activity, at once sentient and intelligent. But this superior 
 activity, in which both the sentient and the intelligent 
 principles are grounded, is not merely /^// by the human 
 subject. In its turn it is also inteWectively perceived. The 
 human subject may likewise confront this activity with the 
 ideal being which it possesses ; may recognize that it, too, 
 like every other entity, is already contained in ideal being, 
 as drops of water are contained in the ocean. As soon as 
 a man has seen this superior activity in ideal being, he has 
 already thereby changed it into a deing, that is, has recog-
 
 2i6 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 nized it as a being. Now, it cannot be a being, except on 
 condition of having an active subsistent principle [by the 
 principle of substance : see below, §§ 93-97]. Man, therefore, 
 discovers, in this activity, being, or substance, the active prin- 
 ciple, sentient, intelligent, and unifying— 2. principle perfectly 
 one and simple, but furnished with a triple act. On reaching 
 this stage of the process, man has found himself; so far, 
 however, without being aware of it. In fact, he does not 
 yet know that that being, that substance, which he has 
 discovered, is himself. He has not yet formed the con- 
 sciousness of himself; he is not yet able to pronounce the 
 monosyllable /. How is he to take this further step ? we 
 ask again. In what way shall he give himself this new 
 mode of existence and life ? How shall it happen that he 
 will not only live, but will begin to know that he lives, to 
 live for himself .-* A single step more, and he will arrive at 
 that too. Having found that single principle which feels, 
 understands, and reasons, he will only have to re-think the 
 manner in which he found this single principle. When he 
 contemplated the unifying or reasoning activity in being, 
 and saw it therein, he performed a new act, in which he 
 perceived the reasoning activity. Now, in that first moment 
 in which a man observes that the act which perceives the 
 reasoning activity is not something different from the 
 reasoning activity itself, but an activity identical with it, 
 in the same moment he has perceived himself, and can 
 pronounce /. In truth, / expresses identity between the 
 reasoning principle and the principle which pronounces it 
 by saying // that is, he who pronounces /, in articulating 
 this monosyllable, testifies that he is conscious that there is 
 an activity, and that this activity is the same that speaks, 
 that announces itself, that is conscious of itself. He who 
 pronounces /, therefore, must have reflected upon his own 
 activity, and have found that what reflected on its own 
 activity was not a diff"erent principle from that on which it 
 reflected. All that now remains to be explained is the 
 manner in which a man is able to recognize that the 
 reflecting and speaking activity is the same as the per- 
 ceiving and reasoning. This identity of principles in the
 
 GENERATION OF THE EGO. 217 
 
 different reflections arises from the inner feeling, that is, 
 from the feeling which man has of his own universal 
 activity, wherein are virtually contained and identified all 
 partial activities, and wherein it is felt that that act which 
 gives rise to perception and reasoning is nothing other than 
 an act, a partial application, of that first fundamental 
 activity, from which likewise proceeds reflection upon that 
 which is perceived and reasoned about, upon perceptions, 
 upon reasonings, upon the reflections themselves, and that 
 this activity is the very one which speaks and posits itself 
 by saying /. Thus is generated the Ego. Hence we see 
 clearly that there are — (i) a subject merely sensitive, which 
 neither sees nor understands itself; (2) an intellective 
 subject, even before this subject understands itself; (3) a 
 human, that is, a sensitive-intellective subject, anterior to 
 its consciousness of itself; and (4) we see that, when the 
 human subject, through diverse internal operations, succeeds 
 in gaining a consciousness of itself, it then becomes an Ego'' 
 {Anthropology, §§ 805-810). 
 
 82. 
 It is true that, after we have perceived both Reflection 
 
 ■^ would be 
 
 the corporeal world and ourselves, we may reflect »nabie to 
 
 ^ •' compare 
 
 upon these two perceptions, compare the object perceived 
 of the one with that of the other, and mark their togetiier, 
 
 if it had 
 
 relations. This comparison we could not make not 
 
 universal 
 
 unless we had in our minds universal being-, being, by 
 
 r 11 1 • \\7\ r 1 "leans of 
 
 the measure of all bemgs. When we refer real, which it 
 
 ,,..,,. 1 r ^ • knows ihe 
 
 particular, hmited bemg to the essence 01 bemg, mode and 
 its ground and principle, we understand that the of its '^ 
 former is not a complete realization of the latter ; in'those 
 and when we refer other real, particular, limited anl",^''' 
 beings to the same essence, we are able to see ,hey^' ' 
 whether they are, or are not, realizations having IJot°t?the 
 the same mode and quantity as the preceding. ^j^"J.'j_^
 
 2l8 
 
 PHIL OS OP II IC A L S YS TEM. 
 
 Principle 
 of the dis- 
 cernibility 
 of indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 If, when we refer a second being to the essence 
 of being, we see that it is a realization having the 
 same mode and quantity as the first, we call it a 
 being of the same species. Although it may be 
 in all respects like the preceding, we may yet be 
 able to see that it is a different individual, from 
 the fact that it is the object of a second perception 
 contemporaneous with the first. And this is the 
 principle of the discernibility of individtials. If 
 the second being were the object of the same 
 identical perception as the first, they would not 
 be two individuals, but one. 
 
 Rosmini carefully distinguishes between the individual 
 and the idea of the individual ; but he seems to find no 
 prhiciple that satisfactorily explains individuation. He 
 says, "The true individual occurs only in the order of real 
 being, and the principle of individuation is simply the 
 reality of being " {Anthropology, § 785. Cf under § 84). 
 
 Origin of 
 the ideas of 
 numbers. 
 
 We know, then, the nuviber of contempo- 
 raneous perceptions, when the individual beings 
 are exactly the same in all other respects — a 
 supposition logically possible. The reason of 
 which is that, in this case, we are able to refer two 
 or more individuals at once to universal being, 
 by the light of which we are able to see that the 
 realization of two is more than the realization of 
 one. Thus arise the ideas of numbers. After- 
 wards, of course, comes abstraction (reflected 
 attention limited to certain observable elements 
 of being), and gives us pure numbers.
 
 SPECIFIC. I TION. 2 1 9 
 
 84. 
 
 If, however, two perceived beings are recog- Difference 
 
 , , . ^^ , , * of mode of 
 
 nized as dmerent, not only because they are per- realization 
 
 ■I -t -i-cr • conslitutes 
 
 ceived by dmerent contemporaneous perceptions, difference 
 but also because they differ in the mode or quan- diffe^rence' 
 tity of their realization, then they are recognized ITraTtuaiity 
 as different in species, or, if their species is the acSenS 
 same, as different in some accidental attribute. ^''^'^'■^"'^^^• 
 The difference in mode of realization constitutes 
 the difference of species ; the difference in the 
 quantity, or even of the actuality, is the cause of 
 accidental differences. 
 
 This doctrine will hardly be accepted by those who 
 believe that species are due to quantitative differences of 
 constituent parts, and that accidental differences may, by 
 being perpetuated till they become sufficiently great, consti- 
 tute qualitative or specific differences. Sulphuric anhydride 
 has qualities very different from those of sulphide dioxide, 
 and yet the ground of the difference between the two is 
 purely a matter of quantity (SO3 ; SO2). Here is involved 
 the whole question of the Origin of Species. 
 
 In regard to specification, Rosmini lays down the fol- 
 lowing principles : — 
 
 " (i) Pure reality, without determination, is an abstract 
 concept, which marks neither being, nor substance, nor 
 accident, nor principle, nor term, nor quality, nor quantity, 
 but merely a mode of being. If we descend from this 
 most abstract concept to one less abstract, but still ab- 
 stract, and consider that reality which is the extended 
 term of feeling, it will take the name of matter. Matter, 
 considered thus, without any further determinations, is 
 unlimited, or, more correctly, indefinite, and, therefore, still 
 devoid of quantity. 
 
 " (2) Nothing real can exist indeterminate. . . .
 
 220 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 "(3) Reality is of two \d\\ds, principle and tcfjn. To 
 the term reality belongs nnatter ; ... to the priticiple 
 reality, the spirit, that is, the sensitive principle, the 
 intellective principle, and the rational. 
 
 •* (4) Hence four kinds of forms : 
 
 " A. The form which determines and individuates 
 matter (first kind of form). This form produces diniensive 
 quantity, figure and number of material individuals — parts. 
 
 '' B. The materiated form which determines and indi- 
 viduates the sensitive principle (second kind of form). 
 Formed matter . . . may exist in three states — continuity 
 pure and simple, continuity with internal movements, and 
 continuity with internal harmonic movements. These 
 three states of formed matter give occasion to three 
 varieties of the same species, that is, the species of sensi- 
 tive individuals. 
 
 " C. The form which determines and individuates the 
 intellective principle — object being (third kind of form, 
 pure objective). 
 
 " D. The form which determines the rational principle 
 ■ — object-subject being (fourth kind of form, objective, with 
 determinations coming from the subject), 
 
 " (5) Finally, we may gather from what has been said — 
 
 "A. That the multitude of real, corporeal, animal and 
 human individuals is due to the division of matter, which 
 division is a consequence of its peculiar form. 
 
 "B. That the multiplication of species is due to the 
 various nature of the terms. In other words, as soon as 
 a term, ontologically considered, is so limited that it ex- 
 cludes another and another excludes it, so that between 
 the two there is no gradation, but entire separation, so 
 entire as to make necessary the use of a different idea in 
 order to be thought, then this term excites in the principle 
 2. feeling likeivisc exclusive, which is not a matter of degree, 
 but altogether a different feeling, in which difference con- 
 sists, as we have seen, ontological limitation. Why a term 
 renders itself thus exclusive ; how being is susceptible of 
 such determination ; how many such ontological limita- 
 tions there may be ; — all these are questions . . . whose
 
 AFFIRMATION DOES NOT IMPLY NEGATION. 221 
 
 answers lie hid in the abyss of being. These specific feel- 
 ings have their root in as many exclusive acts of being. 
 
 " C. Finally, the multiplication of genera is due to 
 abstract thought, which, nevertheless, is based on the 
 intrinsic order of being, when it distinguishes different 
 things in it, but, in so far as it separates them and con- 
 siders them apart, operates according to its own subjec- 
 tive laws. 
 
 " Genera which are formed according to some purely 
 mental principle ought to be called, not genera, but classes " 
 {Theosophy, vol. v. pp. 384-386). 
 
 It is needless to add that it is one of St. Thomas' 
 favourite doctrines, derived from Aristotle, that matter is 
 the principle of individuation. See Sum. TJieol, i. q. 3, 
 art. 3, c. ; q. 54, art. 3, 2 m. ; q. 56, art. i, 2 m.; q. 75, 
 arts. 4 and 5, c. ; q. 85, art. i, c. ; q. %6, arts, i and 3, c, 
 etc., etc. 
 
 8s- 
 
 When we refer the perception of bodies and of when may 
 ourselves to universal being, and then compare the that^^^.^ 
 objects of the two perceptions, we find that the ^Vmuui- 
 two limit each other and our mind adds the nega- eacV™'^ 
 tions and distinctions. Then the corporeal world "*^'^** 
 may be called non-Ego (the concept of the Ego is, 
 indeed, much more complicated ; but we will not 
 stop here to explain minutely its formation) ; then 
 we may say that the Ego and non-Ego mutually 
 limit each other ; then, when we perceive the Ego, 
 we shall negate body, and vice versa. 
 
 Probably no one, except Hegel, ever denied that all 
 negation presupposes a previous affirmation ; but it was a 
 great merit on Rosmini's part to have shown that an 
 affirmation does not, as such, include a negation. The
 
 222 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 affirmations of intuition and perception are made without 
 any implied negations, and it is only when we have had 
 several perceptions, and begin to reflect upon and compare 
 them, that their difference induces us to introduce nega- 
 tion. Hence, the perception of the external world by no 
 means includes a negation of the Ego ; nor does the per- 
 ception of the Ego include a negation of the external world. 
 Only when the two are thought together, reflected upon, 
 and compared, does the one become the negation of the 
 other. It was the failure to see this that enabled Hegel to 
 find a starting-point for his Logic. Had he seen that the 
 thought of being does not imply or involve the thought of 
 nothing, he would never have been able to lay the first 
 stone of that huge constructive abuse of negation. 
 
 The mind 
 rises to tlie 
 infinite 
 neitlier in 
 the primal 
 percep- 
 tion, nor 
 in the re- 
 flection 
 wliich 
 com]iares 
 the Ego 
 and non- 
 Ego, but 
 in that 
 which con- 
 siders the 
 llie limita- 
 tion, con- 
 tingency, 
 and rela- 
 tivity of 
 either. 
 
 86. 
 
 A further reflection is necessary, if v^e wish to 
 reason from the finite to the infinite. In this case, 
 the attention of the mind must not fix itself upon 
 what distinguishes the Ego from the non-Ego, but 
 must consider what they have in common, i.e. 
 their Hmltation, and so from the thought of the 
 finite, contingent, etc., ascend to the infinite, 
 necessary, etc. Hence, to ascend to the thought 
 of the infinite, necessary, and absokite, I do not 
 require the two perceptions, but I may reach it 
 equally well by setting out from either of them, 
 since each is limited, contingent, and relative. 
 Therefore, that act of the mind by which I ascend 
 to the infinite is not primitive perception. It is 
 not even that reflection whereby I compare the 
 perception of the Ego with the perception of the 
 non-Ego ; but it is a reflection in which, from the
 
 NOTION OF THE INFINITE. 223 
 
 limits of either the Ego or the non-Ego indif- 
 ferently, I leap into the infinite. 
 
 One learns how valuable such a result as this is, by- 
 seeing what strange conclusions persons come to, who have 
 not reflected on the source and nature of our concept of the 
 infinite. Max Miiller, for example, holds that we perceive 
 the infinite with our senses. In answer to the question, 
 how a being with only five senses, which supply him with 
 knowledge of only finite things, comes to think or speak of 
 anything not finite or infinite, he says, " I answer without 
 fear of contradiction (!) that it is his senses which give him 
 the first impression (!) of infinite things, and supply him in 
 the end with an intimation of the infinite. Everything of 
 which his senses cannot perceive a limit is to a primitive 
 savage, or to any man in an early stage of intellectual 
 activity, unlimited or infinite. Man sees ; he sees to a 
 certain point, and there his eyesight breaks down. But 
 exactly where his sight breaks down, there presses upon 
 him, whether he likes it or not, the perception of the 
 unlimited or the infinite. It may be said that this is not 
 perception, in the ordinary sense of the word. No more it 
 is, but still less is it mere reasoning. In perceiving the 
 infinite, we neither count, nor measure, nor compare, nor 
 name. We know not what it is, but we know that it is, 
 and we know it, because we actually feel it and are brought 
 in contact with it. If it seems too bold to say that man 
 actually sees the infinite, let us say that he suffers from the 
 invisible, and this invisible is only a special name for the 
 infinite " {Lectiwes on the Origin and Grozvth of Religion, 
 p. 27). In other words, where the finite ceases to make an 
 impression on man, there he is brought into contact with 
 the infinite, a perception of it presses on him, and he suffers 
 from it. Now, what sort of contact is possible with the 
 infinite as infinite .-' How can a perception press 1 And if 
 it could, what kind of pressure would it have to exert in 
 order to give a sense of the infinite .-' What would have to 
 be the nature of suffering in order that it should seem the 
 infinite .-' It is true that, where sight breaks down, one
 
 224 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 suffers from a sense of incapacity ; but the question is, why- 
 does one posit, on that account, anything beyond what he 
 sees. Sense feels what it feels and no more. It is intel- 
 ligence with its infinite ideal object that comes in and 
 declares that there is no end to being. It need hardly be 
 said that Max Muller has no notion of what constitutes per- 
 ception, or of what is meant by the infinite. The invisible 
 a special name for the infinite ! It follows that total 
 darkness is the infinite ! How blessed are the blind ! 
 
 The 
 
 supreme 
 principle 
 of all our 
 reasoning. 
 
 87. 
 
 We know the relations of perceived beings, 
 therefore, through reflection, in that we refer them 
 to universal being, and observe how nearly they 
 approach its fulness or how much they fall short 
 of it. Thus is discovered the fountain of all 
 reasonings and the supreme principle on which 
 they all rest. If we try to formulate this principle, 
 it will take this form : The human mind, knowing 
 the essence of being, affirms being in feeling ; then, 
 drawing a comparison and referring the affirmed 
 being to the essence of being, it knows its condi- 
 tions, limits, and relations. Afterwards, by means 
 of new reflections, it refers, in the same way, the 
 cosfnitions arrived at to the essence of beino-, and 
 thus draws from it ever new cognitions. 
 
 The prin- 
 ciple of 
 substance 
 one of the 
 conditions 
 of real 
 })einor fall- 
 
 88. 
 
 Let us stop and consider the conditions of 
 perceived beings. The conditions under which 
 real beings subsist are of two kinds : those 
 which fall under perception, and those which fall
 
 PRINCIPLE OF SUBSTANCE. 225 
 
 under reasoning. By the former, I mean those ing under 
 which render real being capable of being per- tion. 
 ceived. Among these is t\\Q p7^inciplc of substance, 
 which we must now explain. 
 
 Substance Rosmini defines as " that energy whereby a 
 being and all that it includes actually exist," or "that 
 energy in which is based the actual existence of a being " 
 {New Essay, vol. ii. § 587). As his doctrine in regard to it 
 involves one of the cardinal points of his system, it will be 
 necessary to devote some space to it. 
 
 " Let us see, then," he says, " in how many ways the 
 mind conceives this energy ; and, to see this, let us analyze 
 its concept. In this we may note two elements : first, the 
 act of existence, or that energy whereby a being exists ; 
 second, the being itself which exists (essence). This dis- 
 tinction is made only through abstraction ; but abstraction 
 is precisely what we require in this case, because we are 
 dealing with what takes place in the mind, and not with 
 what takes place outside of it. . . . 
 
 " What, then, are the modes which our idea of sub- 
 stance may assume .'' 
 
 "(i) We may think the energy whereby beings exist 
 universally, that is, by thinking not any particular being, 
 but merely any possible being ; not fixing any determi- 
 nation, but supposing it determined in that mode which is 
 necessary in order that it may exist. This is the idea of 
 substance in general. 
 
 " (2) We may think the energy of a being furnished 
 with some generic determination. This is the idea of 
 generic substance. 
 
 " (3) ^Ve may think the aforesaid energy of a deter- 
 minate being specifically ; that is, we may think the actual 
 existence which the individual of a determinate species 
 may have, thinking in that idea the complete individual, 
 furnished with all that it requires in order to exist, that is, 
 with all its common, as well as with all its proper, marks. 
 When the mind has succeeded in thinking the possibility 
 
 Q
 
 226 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 that such an individual should actually exist, without yet 
 knowing that it does really exist, it has the idea of specific 
 substance, an exemplary idea, or one reducible to an exem- 
 plary idea. . . . 
 
 " Hence, in the three ideas of substance, there is always 
 thought a thing entirely determined as being, and lacking 
 nothing but subsistence, which thing I call individual. . . . 
 If I think the energy by which an individual may subsist, 
 I think substance in general ; if I think the energy whereby 
 an individual of a given genus may subsist, I think generic 
 substance ; if I think the energy whereby an individual of 
 a given species may exist, I think specific substance. Idea 
 of substance in general, idea of generic substance, idea of 
 specific substance, are always ideas of the energy which 
 constitutes actual existence, which can be only individual. 
 
 " I cannot think the actual existence of a being without 
 at the same time thinking that this being may receive all 
 the determinations which it requires in order to exist. The 
 idea of an individual, therefore, is intimately connected 
 with, and comprised in, the idea of substance, so that an 
 explanation of the origin of the one explains the origin of 
 the other. Now, there cannot exist in our minds any other 
 ideas of substance or individual besides these three, that 
 is, the universal, the generic, and the specific. We must, 
 therefore, describe the origin of each of these. 
 
 " Supposing such description given, we should not even 
 then have offered an explanation of all the thoughts which 
 we think regarding substances. Besides ideas, we form judg- 
 ments respecting the real subsistence of substances. . . . 
 The act whereby we pronounce ' a thing subsists ' is an 
 operation of the mind {spiritd), essentially different from 
 simple intuition ; it is an operation which unites to the idea 
 of the thing the persuasion of, or belief in, the subsistence of 
 what was previously thought as possible. Hence, as we 
 have three ideas of substance, so also we may form three 
 judgments regarding their subsistence: (i) That there 
 subsists a substance simply ; (2) that there subsists a 
 substance of a given genus ; (3) that there subsists a 
 substance of a given species. . . .
 
 PRINCIPLE OF SUBSTANCE. 227 
 
 "Of all these ideas and of all these judgments we must 
 describe the origin, or show their mode of possibility in the 
 human mind. In order to facilitate this undertaking, let us 
 see if we can in some measure contract the limits of our 
 investigations. ... In the first place, our path is shortened 
 by the connection in which the three ideas stand to each 
 other. They are, indeed, united in such a way that the 
 one is engendered from the other. Hence, if we explain 
 the origin of one, we explain that of all. 
 
 " In order to see this, let us begin with the idea of 
 specific substance. Now, in order to obtain the ideas of 
 generic and universal substance, we have only to abstract 
 them from this. . . . Hence, if we explain the idea of 
 specific substance, we explain also the other two. . . . 
 Whence, then, comes the idea of specific substance ? In 
 searching for the origin of this idea, we find that it is con- 
 nected with judgments which we form regarding the 
 subsistence of beings — a connection which still further 
 limits the field of our investigations ; since, when we have 
 understood this connection, we shall see that with one 
 explanation we have answered not only the question, 
 What is the origin of the idea of specific subsistence ? but 
 also the question. What is the origin of the judgments 
 which we make respecting the subsistence of substances } 
 
 "The judgments which we form respecting the sub- 
 sistence of substances are, as we have said, three. Let us 
 show the nexiis between them, and how the difficulties in 
 all three may be reduced to one. In judging that there 
 subsists (i) any individual being, (2) an individual of a 
 certain genus, or (3) an individual of a certain species, 
 we must be moved by some ground. 
 
 " This ground, which determines us to affirm the sub- 
 sistence of individuals, is the ground of our perception of 
 the same. When this is found, those judgments arc 
 explained, that is, we see how they may be formed by 
 our minds. This shows that in all these three kinds of 
 judgment, the difficulty to be overcome is one and the 
 same, and consists in showing plainly what is our ground 
 for saying to ourselves. This individual subsists. We must
 
 228 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 therefore, first, indicate the mode in which we form the 
 idea of specific substance ; second, show what is the ground 
 that leads us to judge respecting the subsistence of sub- 
 stances. To this simpHcity we have reduced our inquiry. 
 But it may be simpHfied still further, if we consider the 
 nexus between the two questions. Let us suppose we 
 know the ground that moves us to posit the subsistence of 
 an individual. On this ground, we say to ourselves. This 
 individual subsists. Now, in our perception of this indi- 
 vidual there is already included the idea of substance, 
 since, inasmuch as substance is merely the energy by which 
 a being exists, we cannot conceive a subsistent being 
 without conceiving along with it the energy whereby it 
 exists, and this is its substance. The two questions, there- 
 fore, reduce themselves to one : How can I pronounce a 
 judgment on the subsistence of a being.? When, indeed, I 
 make this judgment and thus perceive this being, I at the 
 same time perceive its substance, and hence easily form, or 
 rather, have already formed, the idea of it " {New Essay, 
 vol. ii. §§ 589-596). 
 
 It follows, of course, from this, that substance is merely 
 the ideal being which we unite to sensations in the act of 
 intellective perception, thereby giving them objectivity. 
 Substance, therefore, is merely objective being, the form of 
 the mind. It may be supposed from this that substance, 
 being synonymous with ideal being, is a mere abstraction, 
 a mere mental figment. Rosmini, however, is very far from 
 considering either the one or the other in this light. Ac- 
 cording to him, an abstraction is not necessarily a mental 
 product. He says, " When I call the idea of universal 
 being most abstract, I do not mean that it is produced by 
 the operation of abstraction, but only that it is, in its 
 nature, abstract and separate from all subsistent beings " 
 i^Neiv Essay, vol. iii. § 1455)- This is a point of extreme 
 importance. 
 
 It is curious to observe to what strange consequences 
 Herbert Spencer has been led by a failure to reach the 
 truth respecting the nature of the idea of substance. 
 " Existence," says this distinguished biologist, " means
 
 SUBSTANCE OF MIND. 229 
 
 nothing more than persistence ; and hence in mind that 
 which persists in spite of all changes, and maintains the 
 unity of the aggregate in defiance of all attempts to divide 
 it, is that of which existence in the full sense of the word 
 must be predicated — that which we must postulate as the 
 substance of mind in contradistinction to the varying forms 
 it assumes. But, if so, the impossibility of knowing the 
 substance of mind is manifest. By the definition, it is that 
 which undergoes the modification producing a state of mind. 
 Consequently, if every state of mind is some modification of 
 this substance of mind, there can be no state of mind in 
 which the unmodified substance of mind is present " {Prin- 
 ciples of Psychology, vol. i. pt. ii. ch. i. § 59). 
 
 This would seem very cogent reasoning. Let us con- 
 sider it. The substance of mind is its persistent element. 
 Admitted. But how do we ever come to know that there is 
 in the mind a persistent element .-• It must be, of course, by 
 some modification, producing a state of mind. But what 
 modification of mind could produce a state corresponding 
 to permanency .'* By the very definition, no modification is 
 permanent, and since modifications alone produce states of 
 mind, there can be no state permanent. Hence it would be 
 utterly impossible for the mind ever to discover that it had 
 a permanent element, that is, to recognize its own persistent 
 identity. Again, since in no modification of mind its 
 unmodified substance can appear, a fortiori, in no modi- 
 fication of mind can any other modification of the substance 
 of mind appear. It will follow directly that the mind can 
 never know any past modification, and hence that it can 
 have no continuity of consciousness and no memory. The 
 source of the error which leads Spencer to these mani- 
 festly false results is very evident. Is knowledge a mere 
 state of mind, a modification of its substance } If it 
 were so, there would be absolutely no difference between 
 sensation and knowledge, for no one will question that 
 sensation is a modification of the substance of mind. It 
 would follow from this that pain and the knowledge of 
 pain were the same thing, and that the only way to know 
 or think of a toothache would be to have one. But this is
 
 230 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 obviously untrue. Hence, knowledge is not mere sensation, 
 and, therefore, not merely a modification of the substance 
 of mind. If we ask wherein knowledge differs from sensa- 
 tion, the most simple reply is, that knowledge always has 
 an object, whereas sensation, in so far, at least, as it is a 
 modification of the substance of mind or a mental state, 
 never has an object. To speak of the object of a modifica- 
 tion or of a state would be a patent absurdity. Nothing is 
 known until it is made an object, that is, until it ceases to 
 be a modification and state of the subject, and becomes a 
 permanent something altogether independent of subjective 
 states. If this be the case, there is no reason why the 
 mind should not make itself, with or without its modi- 
 fications, an object to itself, and, abstracting from these 
 modifications, if need be, think its substance unmodified. 
 But, after this operation was performed, how would the 
 substance of mind, being without modifications and there- 
 fore without distinguishing marks, differ from any other 
 substance .'' What would it be more than simple being, the 
 element which ever}' object of thought must have in order 
 to be thought 1 But surely we know what being is. If we 
 did not, we should not know anything, for nothing is 
 known except as being. We could not even put the 
 question. What is being .'' without already knowing what 
 it was. The question implies that we desire an answer in 
 terms of being. It thus appears that we know what 
 substance unmodified is, and since we know the modi- 
 fications that distinguish the substance of mind, we know 
 even its specific substance. What we do not know is, how 
 these modifications are connected, how substance comes 
 to be modified in this particular way. But there is no 
 apparent reason why we should not discover this, and 
 therefore no ground for dogmatic agnosticism with refer- 
 ence to spiritual entities. 
 
 89. 
 
 We can- We saw (§ 74) that in all our sensations of 
 
 body there are three activities : first, the activity 
 
 not per 
 ceive sen-
 
 PURE SENSATION. 231 
 
 which modifies us ; second, our modification ; and, sations 
 
 . f~ pure, but 
 
 third, ourselves who are modified. The first of only as 
 
 .... . modifica- 
 
 these activities is the object of our perception oftionsof 
 
 ourselves. 
 
 body ; the third, the object of our perception of 
 ourselves : it remains for us to consider the second, 
 our own modification, or sensation itself. The 
 sensation or modification of ourselves is certainly 
 what stimulates our intellectual attention to per- 
 ceive bodies and ourselves. But our sensation is 
 not the body which produces it, neither is it we 
 ourselves. What is it, then ? Do we perceive it ? 
 If we consider its nature, we see clearly that it is 
 a passive act of our feeling, and that w^e ourselves 
 are a feeling susceptible of various modifications. 
 We see, moreover, that this modification of the we- 
 feeling is produced by the action of an external 
 agent. But all this knowledge concerning sensa- 
 tion we now have through reflection. Does it, 
 therefore, fall within perception } Here again we 
 must appeal to fact, so that we may not be misled 
 by capricious theories, and put a false construction 
 on the nature of things. Now, the fact tells that 
 that reflection does not and cannot fall under per- 
 ception alone. And, indeed, what is perception but 
 the affirmation of a real being ? Now, is sensation 
 by itself a real being ? Of course not. It is only 
 a certain passive actuality or quality of a being. 
 Hence, on the occasion of sensations, we never 
 perceive the sensation alone. We always perceive 
 ourselves who are beings, and it is only as united 
 to us that sensation is perceived as a modification 
 of ourselves.
 
 232 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 90. 
 
 Does per- This enables us to solve the somewhat diffi- 
 
 take pkce CLilt question SO ofteii put by philosophers : Does 
 through ""^ the perception of beings take place directly or through 
 reasoning? ^j^^ meditwi of reasoning? Our reply is that it 
 takes place directly, by means of a simple jtcdg- 
 ment, and without any reasoning. We add, how- 
 ever, that this judgment is followed by reflection, 
 which breaks it up into a process of reasoning. 
 This reasoning, although the product of the 
 reflection itself, and entirely distinct from per- 
 ception, leaves upon us the impression that a 
 secret process of reasoning has taken place in the 
 act of perception itself, although it really has not. 
 
 This is easily explained. Perception is a synthetic 
 judgment of objectivity, made by nature, and does not 
 therefore, as such, enter into consciousness. The becoming 
 conscious {das Bewusstzverdeii), the cognition, is the analysis 
 of the judgment made by reflection. Things are really 
 presented to the intelligence as objects, that is, as feelings 
 already combined with being, or, which is the same thing, 
 inhering in substance. What the intelligence does is to 
 analyze these compounds, separating substance, which is 
 the same for all things, from the sensible modifications 
 which alone constitute real differences. Every act of 
 cognition, therefore, is a separation of substance and 
 accident. Judgment gives us cognition ; reflection, recog- 
 nition, in both senses of that term. When I reflect upon 
 a cognitive judgment pronounced spontaneously, I cognize, 
 in a new and indirect way, what I had previously cognized 
 directly, and I also acknowledge my previous cognition as 
 mine.
 
 THE FEELING OF SELF. 233 
 
 91. 
 
 The process by which reflection translates Process by 
 
 f. , . , r 11 • which re- 
 
 our perception 01 ourselves is the lollowing : — flection 
 When the human spirit receives a sensation, it the per- 
 immediately perceives that there is a reality. But ourselves. 
 reality is always an entity which must belong- to a 
 being. Now, the mere reality of sensation is not 
 itself a being. Therefore, if this reality, which 
 must pertain to a being, is not itself a being, 
 there must exist a beinof to which it belong^s and 
 whose actuality it is. Therefore a being subsists. 
 Such is the reasoning that seems to take place in 
 every perception. Properly speaking, however, 
 this reasoning is the work of reflection, which 
 insinuates itself unawares into perception. In 
 fact, perception is the affirmation of a being. 
 Therefore, there is no perception until the spirit How 
 
 much of 
 this 
 
 has said to itself that there is a being — has pro- 
 nounced the last proposition in the above process be^on^Tto 
 of reasoning : A beino^ subsists. The other pro- P5'^'=^P" 
 
 ^ ^ -t^ tion ? 
 
 positions, therefore, are prior to perception. But 
 before perception there is no process of reasoning, 
 since human thought regarding reality begins with 
 perception. Hence the process in question does 
 not properly belong to perception, but is the work 
 of reflection. How, then, does perception take 
 place } Blindly '^ 
 
 "I am a being that thinks itself, therefore I am a 
 substance. The substance of the Ego is a feehng, because 
 the Ego feels. I always feel myself the same in all the 
 various operations which I perform ; and when I am per-
 
 234 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 forming no operation, I feel myself still, because I live, and 
 feel that I live, essentially. This Ego is, therefore, a fun- 
 damental feeling, because all other sensations are based on 
 it. It requires no other sensations ; it is /^r j^ / zf^ never 
 can be without ourselves ; all sensations require an essen- 
 tial feeling, because all possible sensations are but modi- 
 fications of us. With the feeling Ego, therefore, we feel a 
 being, a substance, a subject (that is, a living sentient prin- 
 ciple). In this way, if we think this feeling, we perceive a 
 substance. It is, therefore, a substance that we perceive 
 immediately, and this substance is ourselves " {New Essay, 
 vol. iii. §§ 1 195, 1 196). 
 
 92. 
 
 Perception Of coiirse not. On the contrary, it takes 
 
 take place place in fuU light. As soon as we feel ourselves 
 ^' modified, we pronounce the existence of ourselves, 
 
 because we pronounce nothing else than the 
 existence of a being. When we have a sensation, 
 the first thinof we see is the beino; in which the 
 sensation inheres, the being modified. Before 
 we perceive being, sensation is but a feeling. 
 Given this feeling, we directly affirm the principle 
 of it. This principle is inseparable from it, so 
 inseparable, indeed, that the feeling cannot be 
 known, just as it cannot exist, without it, that is, 
 without the being in which it is. Feeling, there- 
 fore, incites us to affirm not only the feeling itself, 
 but also the being in which it inheres, and, hence, 
 to perceive the being and the feeHng in the being 
 simultaneously. 
 
 Rosmini holds that the sensations do not excite the 
 intelligence directly ; but that, when a need is created in
 
 PRINCIPLE OF SUBSTANCE. 235 
 
 the sensitive nature, the Ego puts forth, in order to satisfy 
 it, all its forces, and among them its intellectual ones, " In 
 this way, the sense, without acting directly on the intelli- 
 gence, occasions intellectual movement. The sense excites 
 the Ego, which possesses the intelligence, to put in activity 
 this intelligence itself The unity of the Ego, therefore, in 
 which sense and intelligence come together, is the mediator 
 and path of communication between these two entirely 
 dififerent powers " {New Essay, vol. iii. § 1258, n.). 
 
 This necessity which constrains us intellec- it is go- 
 
 , . . . , . verned by 
 
 tively to perceive sensation as in the sentient the prin- 
 being, and not as standing by itself, is, when sibsla°nce. 
 formulated into a general principle, called the 
 principle of substance, and may be thus ex- 
 pressed : Whenever the feeling is a reality zuhich 
 does not by itself coitstittite a being capable of 
 forming an object of perception, intellective per- 
 ception does not stop short at this reality, but 
 affrnis the being to which that reality belongs. 
 
 " When we, intelligent beings, supply being to sensitive 
 perception, we thereby form the idea of substance, that is, 
 of a being conceived by us as existing in itself and not in 
 another. When we supply being to the intellective per- 
 ception of an action, then we form the idea of cause, that 
 is, of a substance performing an action.* The act of our 
 understanding is the same in the formation of the idea of 
 cause and in the formation of the idea of substance. 
 Both operations consist in supplying being to that which 
 feeling or perception furnishes to us. This is possible 
 
 * In a note the author says, "By this sup]i]ying of being, we do not 
 create it or make it emanate from ourselves. On the contrary, it is given to 
 us to intuite from the first moment of our existence."
 
 236 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 through the identity of the subject (We) which feels, per- 
 ceives intellectively, and reflects. . . , Cause is a being 
 performing an action outside of itself (effect). . . . Sen- 
 sible quality cannot stand alone without a substance. 
 Action cannot stand alone without a cause. . . . Thus the 
 intellect completes sensation and arrives at substance ; 
 completes perception and arrives at cause " {New Essay, 
 vol. ii. §§ 622-625). 
 
 Substance 
 and acci- 
 dent. 
 
 94. 
 
 The reality which does not by itself constitute 
 a perceivable being is called accident, and the 
 being to which this reahty belongs is called its 
 substance, as being the immediate subst7^atu7n of 
 the accident ; in other words, that wherein the 
 accident is known and affirmed as subslstinsf. 
 
 Why 
 the child, 
 which has 
 not per- 
 ceived it- 
 self, is 
 compelled 
 by the 
 principle 
 of sub- 
 stance to 
 attribute 
 its own 
 sensations 
 to bodies. 
 
 95- 
 
 Before proceeding further, let us reply to an 
 accessory difficulty which may very naturally arise 
 in the mind of the reader. It may be said, You 
 have supposed that, given sensations, we per- 
 ceive ourselves and our sensations as modifications 
 of ourselves. But this is not the fact. The child, 
 when it receives its first sensations, perceives 
 external bodies rather than itself, and even its 
 own sensations it attributes to bodies, believing 
 these to have colour, taste, sound, etc. This, I 
 reply, is certainly true of the child, and is a fresh 
 proof that, in the child, the perception of bodies, 
 as I have already stated, precedes the perception 
 of itself. But this does not affect the principle of
 
 PRINCIPLE OF SUBSTANCE NOT FALLACIOUS. 237 
 
 substance. The child, for the very reason that it 
 has not yet arrived at the perception of itself, is 
 compelled by the law of its understanding, which 
 obeys the principle of substance, to attribute to 
 bodies its own sensations, for the plain reason 
 that, in virtue of this principle, it cannot perceive 
 sensations without attributing them to a being. 
 Being unable, therefore, to attribute them to itself, 
 since it has not yet perceived itself, it attributes 
 them to bodies — to the foreign agent which 
 operates in it and whose force and activity it 
 perceives bound up with every one of its own 
 sensations. So closely, indeed, is the agent bound 
 up with the sensation produced by it, that the 
 closest attention and reflection are required in order 
 to separate the two. 
 
 96. 
 It may now be replied. Then the principle of it does 
 
 , • r 11 • • '1 ^^^ follow 
 
 substance is lallacious, causmg us to attribute our that the 
 
 IT 111 1 principle 
 
 own sensations to bodies and look upon them as of sub- 
 accidents of these. But this is not really the case, fallacious. 
 It is not the principle of substance that causes us 
 to attribute our sensations to external bodies 
 rather than to ourselves. This principle obliges 
 us only to affirm a substance when we have a 
 feeling of accidents, not to specify what substance 
 it is. We have, therefore, to be on our guard and 
 see that the substance which we affirm is the sub- 
 stance to which the accidents properly belong. If Thecrrros 
 in this respect we commit errors, we have a faculty J^ft^^^e-
 
 238 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L S YS TEM. 
 
 ferring 
 
 accidents 
 
 to the 
 
 wrong 
 
 substance 
 
 may be 
 
 corrected. 
 
 whereby we can correct them. Thus, through 
 careful reflection, we come afterwards to recognize 
 that sensations are accidents of ourselves, and not 
 of bodies, although they are felt by us at the same 
 time and place as the bodies which act upon our 
 feeling. Indeed, in the last analysis, a force acting 
 in us is our only concept of these. Now, if we 
 have a faculty whereby we may correct our errors, 
 nothing more is required in order to confute 
 scepticism and secure to us the possession of the 
 truth. 
 
 " The principle which ought to enable us accurately to 
 distinguish, within sensation, the subjective element from 
 the extra-subjective is the following : — Whatever enters into 
 sensation considered in itself (and not in the mode in which 
 it is produced) is subjective ; and all that enters into the 
 concept of our passivity, as attested to us by consciousness, 
 is extra-subjective" {Neiv Essay, vol. ii. § 88i). In other 
 words, sensation, as such, is subjective ; whereas sensitive 
 perception, that is, the feeling of passivity, involving as it 
 does, when reflected on, the notion of activity, is extra- 
 subjective (cf. under § ']^). 
 
 The prin- 
 ciple of 
 substance 
 is the in- 
 tuition of 
 the essence 
 of being, 
 the first 
 and uni- 
 versal 
 truth. 
 
 97- 
 
 What, then, is the principle of substance ? It 
 is simply the application of the idea of being to 
 those felt realities which are not sufficient of them- 
 selves to form a perceivable being ; it is the law of 
 perception. But perception is infallible (§§ 64-70) ; 
 hence also the principle of substance is infallible. 
 We say that a given felt reality sometimes does 
 not by itself constitute a perceivable being. Be-
 
 SPINOZA'S IDEA OF SUBSTANCE. 239 
 
 fore we can say this, we must know what con- 
 stitutes a perceivable being, and this is the same 
 thing as knowing what the essence of being, 
 ' which we affirm in feehng, is. This we know by- 
 nature. Hence the principle of substance is no- 
 thing else but the intuition of the essence of being 
 applied to reality. We are able to affirm it of 
 certain realities (substances) ; of certain others 
 (accidents) we cannot affirm it, unless they are 
 united with the first. In making this distinction 
 we are guided by the essence of being itself, 
 which cannot be realized in the second without 
 the first- — a circumstance which shows that in being 
 there is an intrinsic order. But the intuition of 
 the essence of being does not admit error ; it is 
 the intuition of truth itself Hence the principle 
 of substance does not admit error, but is essentially 
 true. 
 
 It must not be supposed from this that Rosmini holds 
 to the doctrine of a single substance in the Spinozistic 
 sense. Substance is not mere being, but being applied to 
 feeling. If being be separated from the terms of sense, it is 
 no longer substance. Substance is being, employed to 
 render cognition of realities possible, and, when not so 
 employed, becomes a mere abstraction. (See New Essay, 
 vol. ii, § 659, n.) 
 
 98. 
 The condition of perception, therefore, is that One of the 
 
 ^ ,. . rr 1 • T-. n conditions 
 
 m every leehng it must artirm a bemg, Rerlec- of reflec- 
 
 , , , . . , . , . , tion is the 
 
 tion has many other conditions which it tends to principle 
 
 of cause.
 
 240 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 establish. One of these is the principle of cause, 
 whose nature and veracity we must now show. 
 
 In regard to the principle of cause, see under § 93, 
 Cause may be defined as the substance of action. Of 
 course, such cause does not include what, since Aristotle's 
 time, has been called final cause (jo ov fVt/ca), which can 
 exist only for, and act only through, intelligence, and which 
 is known prior to the action whose substance it becomes. 
 " The principle of cause," says Rosmini, " descends from the 
 principle of contradiction, and hence from the principle of 
 cognition. The principle of cause may be expressed thus : 
 Every event (everything that begins) has a cause which 
 produces it. . . . This proposition is entirely equivalent to 
 this other : It is impossible for intelligence to think an 
 event without thinking a cause that has produced it. In 
 order to show that an event without a cause cannot be 
 thought, we must show that the concept of such an event 
 would involve a contradiction. . . . To say that what does 
 not exist acts, is a contradiction. But to say. An event is 
 without a cause, is equivalent to saying, What does not 
 exist acts. Therefore an event without a cause is a 
 contradiction. . . . To conceive an operation (a change) 
 without a being is to conceive without conceiving, which is 
 a contradiction. Indeed, the principle of cognition says, 
 The object of cognition is being ; hence, without a being, 
 there can be no conceiving. . . . An event is an operation 
 (a change). If, therefore, this operation has no cause, it is 
 conceived as isolated, without any being to which it belongs. 
 It is therefore an operation without being, or, which is the 
 same thing, that operates which does not exist " {New 
 Essay, vol. ii. § 569). 
 
 99. 
 
 Various We have already stated wherein reflection 
 
 reflection. consists. It is an act wherein the mind considers 
 the objects of perception, or of previous re- 
 flections, in relation to the essence of beinq-. Let
 
 DISTINCTNESS AND INDEPENDENCE. 241 
 
 US at present deal with reflection of the former 
 order, that which touches objects of perception, 
 and not the objects of previous reflections. 
 
 When reflection refers perceived beines to Reflection 
 the essence of being, it sees how Hmited they are, order dis- 
 
 1 • 1 r 1 r 1 • '11 covers the 
 
 how httle of the essence of being they include, different 
 
 . / . . limitations 
 
 now tar they come short 01 exhausting it. Itandmu- 
 sees that they have the essence of being, but are pendence 
 not that essence. In this way it discovers their beings. 
 interdependence, inasmuch as the dependence of 
 one being upon another is only a kind of limita- 
 tion. That, therefore, which renders contingent 
 limited beings separate, distinct beings is not the 
 same as that which renders them independenL 
 Things may be separate and distinct beings 
 although they be dependent. Hence each of them, 
 as a separate being, may be the object of a 
 special perception. Its dependence is not the 
 object of perception, but of reflection. 
 
 As far as mere perception goes, a table, for example, 
 is a perfectly distinct thing. It is only when reflection 
 comes to consider the act of its coming into existence 
 that its dependence becomes conspicuous. When we think 
 a time before the table was, and then a time after the table 
 was, we find we cannot pass from the latter to the former 
 with the idea of table in our minds, without throwing the 
 existence of the table, in the form of cause, into the earlier 
 time. This means that we cannot think absolute beginning, 
 or passage from nothing to being. As Sir W. Hamilton 
 puts it : " We are utterly unable to realize in thought the 
 possibility of the complement of existence being either 
 increased or diminished. . . . There is conceived an absolute 
 tautology between an effect and its causes " {Lectures on 
 Metaphysics, vol. ii. p. '^yj). 
 
 R
 
 242 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 lOO. 
 
 Norions When we see a being, a reality, a mode, a new 
 
 and effect. accident begin, reflection immediately says that 
 there must be a cause for such being, reality, 
 mode, or accident, and calls the new product an 
 effect. When we consider this operation of the 
 mind, we see that the concept and name of effect 
 are posterior to the name of cause. It is only after 
 we know that a given being could not exist with- 
 out a cause that it receives the name of effect. 
 What is the meaning of recognizing that a being 
 had a cause ? It simply means recognizing that 
 that being (its essence) has not within itself its 
 own subsistence, which, therefore, must come to it 
 from elsewhere. But when we say that a being 
 has not its subsistence in itself, but derives it from 
 without, this is the same thing as saying that it has 
 a cause. When, therefore, we judge that a being 
 must have a cause, we merely recognize that it has 
 not subsistence through its essence. To recognize 
 that a being (or a reality belonging to a being) 
 has not subsistence through its own essence, is 
 only to compare the real perceived being with the 
 essence of being, which, as we said, is the work of 
 reflection. One of the conditions, therefore, under 
 which reflection works, one of its essential rules, is 
 the principle of causation. 
 
 Rosmini frequently adverts to the scepticism of those 
 who deny the absolute universality and necessity of the 
 principle of causation, and undertakes to show that such 
 scepticism is groundless. " The fact," he says " which these
 
 ORIGIN OF THE NOTION OF CAUSE. 243 
 
 philosophers admit is this : ' All men assume the proposition 
 that there is no effect without a cause, recognizing and using 
 it as necessary and universal.' What they deny is, that 
 this proposition is necessary and universal. They say it is 
 so only in appearance. Now, setting out from the fact 
 which they concede, we might reason as follows : — You 
 admit that the proposition, ' Every effect must have a cause,' 
 is necessary and universal in appearance, but you add, only 
 in appearance. Now, I will show you that it could not even 
 appear so to men, if they had not a cognition which was a 
 priori and not due to the senses, that is, a cognition truly 
 necessary and universal. Let us suppose, then, that the pro- 
 position, ' Every effect must have its cause,' is only a limited 
 result of experience, which, expressed in rigorously accurate 
 terms, would take this form : ' Certain events repeatedly 
 precede certain others.' Now I ask, In order that men 
 should have been able, by means of their imaginations, to 
 transform this empirical proposition into this other rational 
 one, ' Every effect must have a cause,' what ideas must they 
 have possessed .'' It is plain that they could not have made 
 the change without having, first, the idea of possibility ; 
 second, the idea of cause ; third, the idea of necessity ; 
 fourth, the idea of universality. Now, all these are ideas 
 that we cannot possibly have from the senses, as our adver- 
 saries themselves admit ; that is, it is impossible to have 
 (i) the idea of possibility, because the possible being of a 
 thing does not fall under the senses ; (2) the idea of 
 cause, because only effects fall under the senses ; (3) the 
 idea of necessity, because the senses show only what is, not 
 what must be ; (4) the idea of universality, because sense 
 experience is limited to a given number of things, and 
 is repeated only a given number of times. The same 
 difficulty, therefore, which occurs in admitting the principle 
 of cause to be true, recurs in admitting it to be apparent " 
 {New Essay ^ vol. i. § 321).
 
 244 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L SYS TEM. 
 
 The prin- 
 ciple of 
 cause is 
 merely an 
 applica- 
 tion of the 
 idea of 
 being to a 
 perceived 
 being, so 
 as to see 
 whether 
 the latter 
 has or has 
 not in it- 
 self sub- 
 sistence. 
 
 lOI. 
 
 It follows from this that the principle of cause 
 is only an application, made by reflection, of the 
 idea of being to a perceived being, by which ap- 
 plication it is seen that the essence of perceived 
 being has not in itself subsistence, which therefore 
 must come to it from without. Hence the prin- 
 ciple of cause is in itself infallible, inasmuch as the 
 object of perception is free from error, and the 
 essence of being with which it is compared is truth 
 itself. All that remains to be done is to recognize 
 whether reality is or not included in the essence 
 of the being perceived. 
 
 " Hypotheses," says Rosmini, " have relation to causes ; 
 but true causes are always metaphysical. Physical causes 
 . . . are only certain circumstances given by external ex- 
 perience, which, when they occur, are always accompanied 
 by certain facts. Hence, there are two absolutely distinct 
 kinds of hypotheses : first, hypotheses of true causes ; 
 second, hypotheses of physical causes " {Logic, § 962). 
 
 What are usually called physical causes are certain 
 phenomena that, invariably preceding other phenomena, 
 are supposed to have an active connection with them. 
 Some recent thinkers would even deny the active connection, 
 and define a physical cause as a phenomenon that invariably 
 precedes another. But, in either case, a physical cause is 
 only the place of true cause, not such cause itself. When 
 I say that heat causes expansion, I have merely located the 
 cause of the second phenomenon. To know this cause 
 itself, I should have so to enter into the being of heat as to 
 see that its union with a material body was tantamount to, 
 or identical with, the expansion of that body. But identity 
 is purely a metaphysical conception ; hence all true cause is 
 metaphysical.
 
 CONTINGENCY. 245 
 
 102. 
 
 To say that the essence of a being does not what is 
 include subsistence is equivalent to saying that berngT^"*^ 
 the perceived being has not in itself the ground 
 of its own subsistence, and that it is contingent. 
 
 " In the concept of being it is necessary that they [all 
 limited modes] exist, otherwise it would no longer be the 
 concept of being, which has unlimited extension. There 
 are, therefore, two necessities, both arising from the nature 
 of being — 
 
 " (i) The necessity that being should exist in itself, and, 
 therefore, that it should have its proper terms, without 
 which its existence in itself would be wanting, and there- 
 fore would annul itself in itself This is the necessity of 
 absolute being, 
 
 " (2) The necessity that being should exist as intel- 
 ligible, because, if it were not intelligible, it would lack the 
 concept of being in itself, and therefore, a fortiori, would lack 
 existence in itself The necessity of the concept of being 
 implies that in this concept are contained also all the 
 limited modes of being, without which that concept would 
 be another, and no longer that of being. This is the 
 necessity of the possible {possibiliwn), or of the essences of 
 limited things (cf New Essay, §§ 307 n., 375 n., 1106, 11 58, 
 1460). Hence comes the concept of contirigency . Every 
 necessity springs out of the nature of being, and reduces 
 itself to this formula : ' Necessity is the property which 
 beingf has of existing in itself . The conditions of the 
 existence of being are two: (i) that it exist with its 
 proper terms ; (2) that the concept of it, embracing all 
 improper terms, exist. But it is not a condition of the 
 existence of being in itself that it exist in itself with its 
 finite terms. The real existence of these is not, therefore, 
 necessary. The absence of this necessity is called contingency. 
 Contingency, therefore, is that negative property of finite
 
 246 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L S YS TEM. 
 
 beings, whereby they do not necessarily exist in themselves, 
 or in their real or moral form " {Theosophy, vol. i. § 427). 
 
 The prin- 
 ciple of in- 
 tep-ation 
 is a deve- 
 lopment of 
 the prin- 
 ciple of 
 cause, and 
 contains 
 the reason 
 why all 
 peoples 
 believe 
 that God 
 exists. 
 
 103. 
 
 With the principle of cause, we run through 
 the whole series of second causes ; but finding 
 them all contingent, we are not able to stop with 
 them. Reflection does not rest until it has ar- 
 rived at a first cause, in whose essence subsistence 
 is included, and this cause is God. The principle 
 of cause, which thus unfolds until it reaches its 
 last operation, was called by us the principle of 
 integration. All men, from a necessity which 
 belongs to intelligent reflection, use the principle 
 of integration with great rapidity, run through 
 the second causes in a body, and, by an irre- 
 sistible rational instinct, arrive at the knowledge 
 of God. For this reason the existence of God 
 has been admitted in all times and by all the 
 peoples of the world (cf. Logic, §§ 680-684). 
 
 This is true, and yet the proof of the existence of 
 God derived from the supposed necessity of positing a first 
 cause is an extremely fallacious one. The argument takes 
 this form. If there be no first cause, there must be an 
 infinite succession of caused causes ; in other words, an 
 infinite number of successive causes. But infinite number 
 is a contradiction in terms, that is, an absurdity. There- 
 fore there must be a first cause. The whole force of the 
 argument lies in the unthinkability of an infinite number 
 actually realized. It is quite true that an infinite number 
 is unthinkable, because all number, from its very nature, is 
 finite. But number altogether is but an intellective mode 
 of grouping, and does not lie in things themselves. It
 
 PRINCIPLE OF INTEGRATION. 247 
 
 may, therefore, be admitted that in finite time it is impos- 
 sible to group an infinite multitude of things ; but it by no 
 means follows that an infinite multitude, beyond any, and 
 therefore beyond all, number, does not exist. An innu- 
 merable multitude of successive causes is therefore entirely 
 possible, and there is no necessity in thought for positing a 
 first cause. This fact does not interfere with the validity 
 of other proofs for the existence of God. 
 
 104. 
 Reflection is guided by other principles be- ah other 
 
 . . principles 
 
 sides these; but, in the last analysis, all its ope-ofreflec- 
 
 , , tion are 
 
 rations reduce themselves to comparing a known reducible 
 object with ideal being, in order to see how far, same way 
 and in what mode, it partakes of the essence of and uni-'^" 
 being, and how far it falls short of that essence. J'^^u^h, the 
 Hence all reflection is by itself an instrument of^Jng'^^" 
 truth, having truth as its type and as the measure [JJluigd^y 
 of all things. 
 
 105. 
 The validity of human reasoning being thus purposes 
 
 . ^ . of the art 
 
 demonstrated, Logic undertakes to teach the art of reason- 
 of it. The first purpose of the art of reasoning '''^" 
 is the avoidance of error, and the second, the 
 attainment, by means of reasoning, of the end 
 proposed. 
 
 106. 
 We avoid errors when we proceed so that the How 
 
 • 1 1 T- 1 errors in 
 
 mind affirms nothing gratuitously, and that the reasoning 
 
 • • • 1 -111 ^"^^ avoid- 
 
 f acuity of conviction is always guided by reason, ed. Des-
 
 248 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 cartes' 
 four rules 
 of method. 
 
 in such a way that what we say to ourselves is 
 reached by way of pure reasoning, without the 
 interference of the will. And here Descartes' 
 four rules of method find their application. 
 
 These four rules, expressed in succinct and compre- 
 hensive language, are: "(i) To accept nothing as true 
 which is not clearly known to be such, from its presenting 
 itself to the mind so clearly and distinctly as to give no 
 occasion for doubt ; (2) to divide, as far as possible, every 
 problem into its natural parts ; (3) to arrange one's 
 thoughts in due order, advancing gradually from the more 
 simple and easy to the more complex and difficult, and to 
 suppose a definite order, for the sake of orderly progress in 
 research, even when none such is furnished naturally by 
 the subject under consideration ; (4) by exhaustive enu- 
 merations and complete revisions, to take care that nothing 
 be overlooked " {Discows de la Methode, Part II.). 
 
 Rosmini lays down six rules or norms, which he re- 
 duces to these two precepts — 
 
 "(i) Never affirm anything you do not know, or in a 
 mode different from that in which you know it. The same 
 applies to denying. 
 
 " (2) Affirm with your inner thought all that you know, 
 but affirm it in the mode in which you know it, without 
 addition or subtraction. The same applies to denying " 
 {Logic, § 168). 
 
 Three 
 aims of 
 reasoning. 
 Hence 
 three 
 
 methods — 
 apodcictic, 
 heuristic, 
 and di- 
 dactic. 
 
 107. 
 
 The aims proposed by reasoning are three : 
 fi7'st, to demonstrate and defend truth : second, to 
 discover new truth, and, thii d, to teach the truth 
 to others. Hence the three methods, the apo- 
 deictic, the heuristic or inventive, and the didactic, 
 each of which has its special rules.
 
 SYLLOGISM. 249 
 
 Rosmini devotes a considerable portion of his Logic to 
 an examination and classification of these rules (Book ii. 
 § iv. pp. 305-473, §§ 749-1038). He has also left a very- 
 valuable work, treating of the didactic method as applied 
 to education. The title of it is, On the Supreme Principle 
 of Method, and on Some of its Applications, for the Benefit of 
 Hum-an Ediication. This work, which is almost unknown 
 outside of Italy, contains many excellent thoughts on edu- 
 cation. 
 
 108. 
 
 The apodeictic method uses various forms of Artifice 
 argumentation, but they may all be reduced to syllogism, 
 that of the syllogism. The artifice of the fhe^various 
 syllogism consists in showing that the proposi- argument 
 tion to be demonstrated is already contained in dudWe. 
 another proposition, either evident or, at least, 
 certain. The syllogism Is composed of three 
 propositions, the last of which Is called the con- 
 clusion or thesis, and the other two the premises. 
 The one of the two premises Implicitly contains 
 the conclusion, and the other proves that It really 
 contains It. The proposition which we wish to 
 show to be contained In the first premise must 
 have either the same subject or the same predicate 
 as that premise. If the subject is the same In 
 both propositions, It Is sufficient to show that the 
 predicate of the conclusion Is contained In the 
 predicate of the proposition assumed. If the pre- 
 dicate Is Identical, It Is sufficient to show that the 
 subject of the conclusion Is contained In the sub- 
 ject of the proposition assumed. In order to show 
 that the predicate or the subject of the conclusion
 
 2SO 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 is contained in the predicate or subject of the 
 proposition assumed, we take a concept which 
 we call the middle term, and show that this is 
 identical either with both predicates or both sub- 
 jects, whence it follows directly that the two 
 subjects or the two predicates are themselves 
 identical, on the ground that " things which are 
 equal to the same thing are equal to one another." 
 
 Rosmini, like all truly great thinkers, sees the value of 
 the syllogism and defends it against Hegel and other 
 detractors. His reply to Hegel is one of the most acute 
 and masterly pieces of philosophical criticism in existence. 
 See Logic, §§ 1092-1098, 
 
 Universal 
 rule of the 
 syllogism. 
 
 109. 
 
 In order to see whether a syllogism is valid 
 or otherwise, we may apply this universal rule : 
 The middle term must have a comprehe-nsion at 
 least equal to that of the predicate, and an exten- 
 sion at least equal to that of the subject, of the 
 conclusion. 
 
 From the 
 necessity 
 of more 
 than one 
 middle 
 term arises 
 the sorites. 
 
 1 10. 
 
 When no one middle term can be found which 
 may be identified with both subjects or both pre- 
 dicates, we may take two or more which are 
 identical with each other, and the first of which is 
 identical with one of the two subjects or two pre- 
 dicates, and the last identical with the other. 
 Then, instead of the second premise, we have two
 
 PROBABILITY. 251 
 
 or more propositions. This form is called a 
 sorites. 
 
 1 1 1. 
 The premises must be certain in order that The con- 
 
 . elusion has 
 
 the conclusion may be necessary and apodeictic. the same 
 If they are only probable, the conclusion will also value as 
 be probable ; if they are hypothetical, the con- mises. 
 elusion will be the same. The doctrine of pro- 
 bability is manifold and most important. 
 
 " All probability," says Rosmini, " is, in the last analysis, 
 based upon this reasoning : I apprehend a certain thing. 
 I have observed that several times when such a thing was, 
 there was also this other, that is, the being (thing) affirmed 
 in the possible judgment. Hence, when this being is 
 affirmed, although I do not apprehend it, still there is 
 probability that it is. Such is the universal foundation of 
 probability. The index or sign of the being affij-vied, that 
 is, of the truth of the proposition, is of many sorts, as many 
 as there are possible connections and relations between one 
 being and another. It would be too long a matter for 
 our present purpose, though an important one, to stop in 
 order to classify them. We will merely observe that, since 
 probability has for its basis the connection ('not known as 
 necessary) between two entities, one of which is appre- 
 hended and the other conjectured from it as its mark, it 
 rests no less on those connections which exist between the 
 nature and the accidents of two entities, than on those 
 which are given in experience, although the connection 
 arising from the nature or the accidents is not seen. Hence 
 there are rational probabilities and experimental probabilities, 
 according as the connection in question is rational or purely 
 experimental. . . . 
 
 " The rational probability which is derived from know-
 
 252 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 ing the nature and accidents of two connected entities may 
 be called philosophical ; the probability which is inferred 
 from similar cases may be called mathematical. These two 
 kinds of probability are frequently found intermingled. . . . 
 Philosophical probability, arising from the consideration of 
 two entities connected together, does not lend itself to 
 mathematical calculation, but is discovered through medi- 
 tation, and this is one of the chief reasons why the calcula- 
 tion of probabilities has a limited sphere, beyond which 
 when mathematicians try to go, they fall into error. And 
 these errors may be attributed to three special causes. 
 Either, firsts the calculation does not seize the rational 
 probability ; or, second, the calculation tries also to seize the 
 rational part and errs through the difficulty of reducing it 
 to figures ; or, third, it frequently happens that the similar 
 cases which form the basis of experimental probability are 
 the effect of the nature of the two connected entities and 
 represent it ; hence every tim.e there is added to the 
 calculation any figure to express the rational probability, 
 the same thing is made to enter twice into the calculation. 
 Sometimes, again, the number of similar cases results from 
 diverse causes, that is, from the connection based upon the 
 nature of the two entities and from other causes foreign to 
 these ; and it is most difficult to determine how much of the 
 frequency of similar cases is due to the one source and how 
 much to the other. Every time, therefore, that mathe- 
 maticians, not content with basing their calculations on the 
 number of similar cases, presume to base it also on the 
 causes that may have produced them, they almost in- 
 evitably fall into error. And they do the same, if, omitting 
 to include in the calculation the probability which arises 
 from causes, they deal merely with the number of similar ■ 
 cases, because most frequently this number cannot be 
 derived from experience save in a very imperfect and often 
 irregular manner " {Logic, §§ 1073-1076). The logical rela- 
 tion of the calculation of probabilities to the distributive 
 judgment has been treated with great clearness by F. A. 
 Lange in his Logische Studien, pp. 99 sqq.
 
 SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE. 253 
 
 112. 
 
 The heuristic or inventive method teaches Three 
 
 sources 
 
 how truth nriay be obtained from the sources from 
 
 r^-, which a 
 
 within the reach of man. These sources are, knowledge 
 generally speaking, three : Jii^st, authority and derived. 
 tradition ; second, observation and experience ; and, 
 third, reasoning — each of which may, again, be 
 subdivided into many. The question of how the 
 various human faculties must be applied to these 
 sources in order to draw from them pure and 
 abundant knowledge, and the question of how 
 certain external means, which direct and aid these 
 faculties, are to be applied, afford abundant material 
 for this part of logic. 
 
 113- 
 The didactic method is s^eneral or particular. The 
 
 ^ / _ didactic 
 
 according as it contains the general principles for method 
 the communication of truth, or particular rules for general or 
 
 , . particular. 
 
 the teaching of special sciences. 
 
 114. 
 Each of these three methods has a supreme Supreme 
 
 principles 
 
 principle which directs it. That of the apodeictic of the 
 method is : Given a proposition which is certain, methods, 
 all that is implicitly contained in it is also certain. 
 That of the heuristic method is : The idea of 
 being, which is the light of reason, when applied in 
 the proper way to new feelings or to cognitions
 
 254 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L SYS TEM. 
 
 already possessed, produces new cognitions. That 
 of the didactic method is : Let the truths which it 
 is desired to teach be arranged in such an order 
 that those which precede do not require those 
 which follow in order to be understood. 
 
 Why 
 
 Ideology 
 
 and Logic 
 
 were 
 
 called 
 
 Sciences of 
 
 Intuition. 
 
 Sciences of Perception. 
 Psychology and Cosmology. 
 
 Ideology and Logic were called Sciences of 
 Intuition, because they treat of the means of 
 knowing, and this is ideal being, which is intuited. 
 After we have come into possession of the means 
 of knowing, we have still to apply it to the various 
 beings that present themselves to us, and to try to 
 discover their ultimate grounds. But the first 
 application which we can make of the means of 
 knowing to beings, we make by means of per- 
 ception. Since the only function of the intellect 
 is that of intuition, there remain for the reason the 
 two functions of pe^'ception and reflection. Now, 
 we cannot reflect upon anything relating to real 
 beings unless perception supplies the material. 
 The abstract sciences, therefore, cannot be legiti- 
 mately built up, except through reasoning based 
 upon material supplied by perception. 
 
 In answer to the question, "What means has the 
 human reason for knowing essences, or for forming the ideas 
 of things ? " Rosmini says, " These are four : {\) perception ; 
 (2) ajtalysis and synthesis ; (3) the perception of natural
 
 PSYCHOLOGY AND COSMOLOGY. 255 
 
 or conventional signs, and chief among these latter words ; 
 (4) integration" {Nezv Essay, vol. iii. § 1220; cf. under 
 § 103). Rosmini entirely agrees with Kant, that nothing 
 respecting the nature of reality can be known except 
 through feeling ; but he differs from Kant in holding that 
 we can infer by reason the real, and not alone the ideal ex- 
 istence of certain beings — for example, of a First Cause 
 or God. 
 
 116. 
 
 Now, what are the beings which we can per- what we 
 ceive } All those, and only those, which fall under ceivHs" 
 our feeling, wherein alone we find reality — our- and thT^ 
 selves and the external world. Hence the philo- ^"o^m^^ 
 sophical sciences of perception are Psychology and JJg^^o 
 
 Cosmology. sciences 
 
 o^ Fyscno- 
 
 logy and 
 
 "The science of the world, or Cosmology, is unquestion- logy. 
 ably a science of perception and observation, and if by 
 world is meant all that is created, Psychology itself 
 becomes a material part of Cosmology, since, after all, man 
 is a member of the world. But it is one thing to consider 
 sciences from the point of view of their subject matter, 
 another, to regard the fountain from which they spring. 
 If Cosmology be considered in relation to the source from 
 which man draws it, it is readily seen to rise out of Psycho- 
 logy, inasmuch as it is a science of perception and obser- 
 vation. ... In the feeling of the soul there is a duality, 
 there is a subjective element, and there is an extra-subjective 
 element, which through reflection respectively change into 
 Ego and non-Ego. . . . Hence it is the feeling of the soul 
 that enables us to know the material universe . . . Thus Psy- 
 chology furnishes the first rudiments to Cosmology. Cos- 
 mology is, in truth, conceived in the womb of Psychology, 
 as the known world exists in the bosom of the soul " 
 {Psychology, §§ 24-26).
 
 256 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Super- 
 natural 
 Anthropo- 
 logy goes 
 beyond the 
 limits of 
 mere phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 117. 
 
 The Christian doctrine teaches us that, by a 
 gracious communication, we receive also the feehng 
 of God, whereby we are Hfted to the supernatural 
 order of things. The science which treats of this 
 deiform perception we have called Supernatural 
 Anthropology.* It goes beyond the limits of mere 
 philosophy. 
 
 What is 
 Psycho- 
 logy? 
 
 I . Psychology. 
 
 118. 
 
 Psychology is the doctrine of the human soul. 
 
 Rosmini has left two great works on Psychology, the 
 one called after the science, the other entitled Anthropology 
 in the Service of Moral Science. Of all Rosmini's works, 
 these best deserve to be widely known. 
 
 Parts of 
 Psycho- 
 logy. 
 
 119. 
 
 Psychology does three things : first, it shows 
 what is the essence of the soul ; second, it describes 
 its development ; and, third, it discusses its des- 
 tinies [cf. Psychology, vol. i. §§ 45-49]. 
 
 120. 
 
 All reason- The essence of the soul is known through per- 
 
 l"sfence^of ception. If the soul did not /^^/ itself, it would 
 
 * See Bibliography of Rosmini's works, Class VI.
 
 BEING AND FEELING. 257 
 
 be unable to perceive itself. It is a primitive fact, the soul 
 and the starting-point of all reasoning regarding from our 
 the soul, that each individual feels and perceives the soui. 
 his own soul. Experience and reason show us 
 that this fact may be generalized, and that in 
 every case there is no perception without feeling. 
 In truth, bodies themselves would not be perceived 
 by the understanding, if they were not first felt. 
 
 " Being and feeling cannot be defined. The notion of 
 being is supposed in every affirmation. Remove this 
 notion and all speech and all thought are rendered im- 
 possible. If we try to explain what we mean by being, we 
 shall find that we use being to explain being. Feeling 
 likewise is indefinable. It is a most simple thing to him 
 who has experience of it ; but no one could communicate 
 a knowledge of it to one who had not. At best, he could 
 say that feeling is a certain mode of being " (Angeleri, 
 Trattato di Filosofia Elementare, p. 9). 
 
 121. 
 But between the feeling which we all have of Difference 
 
 between 
 
 bodies and the feeling which each of us has of his our feeling 
 
 • 1 • ^•rr ^ ^ ^• of bodies 
 
 own soul, there is this great difference : that bodies and our 
 are felt as something foreign to us ; our souls, as our own 
 something of our own, as ourselves even. Bodies 
 are felt by the soul ; the soul is felt by itself and 
 through itself. From this we derive at once a 
 preliminary definition of the soul. If the soul 
 feels itself, it is in its essence feeling, since it is 
 only feeling that is felt by itself (per se) ; and if 
 bodies are felt by the soul, and the soul is felt by 
 itself, the soul is the principle of feeling. The 
 
 s
 
 258 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 soul, therefore, is a principle of feeling implanted 
 in feeling. 
 
 " Feeling is given originally. The question, therefore, 
 is not, how feeling arises, but how it is modified and how 
 it gives birth to sensation " {Neiv Essay, § 717). " The Ego, 
 which reflects upon itself, finds that, at bottom, it is a 
 feeling that constitutes the sentient and inteUigent subject" 
 {Ibid. § 719). "When I undertake to analyze the energy 
 whereby sensations exist, I find that the concept of it includes 
 not merely the act whereby the sensations exist, but some- 
 thing more. . . . The sensations exist ; therefore, there is an 
 energy which makes them exist. Now, what are sensations 
 . . . and how do they occur ? If I observe the facts, I find, 
 in the first place, that sensations occur in me (this is 
 attested by my consciousness), that is, that colours, sounds, 
 etc., are all my sensations, in such a way that, if I did not 
 exist, or if I had not the faculty of feeling, I should not 
 only be without them, but they would not exist at all. . , . 
 Observing this to be the nature of sensation, I say that 
 there must be a sentient subject besides the sensations and 
 the act whereby they exist, something else in which this 
 act of this existence is rooted, and that this fact is so 
 manifest as to require no proof. Indeed, when I say, ' I feel 
 this odour, I see this colour,' besides the sensations, I posit 
 the / which perceives them and which is their subject. The 
 Ego, therefore, is not simply the act whereby the sensations 
 exist, since in the pure idea of existing sensations I do not 
 yet find the Ego. On the contrary, but for the Ego, I 
 should be obliged to think in sensations an equal number 
 of self-existents, whereas, when I think the number of sen- 
 sations as I experience them, I convince myself that many 
 of them are referable equally to a single Ego. The Ego, 
 therefore, which experiences many sensations, is one, and 
 the sensations experienced by the Ego are many. The Ego, 
 therefore, is diff"erent from the sensations, as the subject is 
 different from the modifications to which it is subject. 
 Again, the Ego undergoes many actual sensations, and 
 many sensations cease for the Ego, while others supervene.
 
 THE EGO IN SENSATION. 259 
 
 The Ego, meanwhile, does not cease to be what it was, 
 although it is furnished with diverse sensations. It has, 
 therefore, the power of being- modified, and the power of 
 feeling many sensations is something altogether different 
 from any one actual sensation. Finally, the sensation is 
 felt by the Ego, whereas the Ego is that which feels. 
 These characteristics, not only different but contrary, clearly 
 show that sensations and the act which makes them exist 
 cannot be conceived without a middle subject, that is, with- 
 out something in which that act of the existence of sensa- 
 tions terminates, before it terminates in them, and in which 
 sensations receive and have existence. 
 
 , " In all this, the important point to observe is that 
 the sentient subject in question is not deduced from a long 
 train of reasoning, but from a simple analysis of this idea, 
 existent sensation. In the same way, therefore, as we showed 
 above, . . . that even to conceive an existent sensation 
 (this is granted by Hume) is to conceive a substance, and 
 this from the analysis of existing sensation, so here we show 
 that the mere conceiving of a substance is conceiving some- 
 thing different from the sensations (their subject), and this 
 by means of the analysis of the idea of substance. The 
 subject of sensations, therefore, is not merely an act ex- 
 tending to them, but is a principle existing in itself, which 
 has the power to feel, and abides even when deprived 
 of all special and accidental feelings " {New Essay, vol. ii. 
 §§ 640-643). 
 
 There is no greater difficulty in conceiving an existing 
 sensation than in conceiving any other unit of force, such, 
 for example, as an atom. Indeed, the difficulty is even less 
 in the former case, since sensation is in its nature a principle 
 of unity. The difficulty with regard to the conception of 
 the human soul resolves itself into the difficulty of con- 
 ceiving how these units of sensation are united in a higher 
 sentient unity. But this is no more difficult than to con- 
 ceive how a number of atomic forces unite to form a 
 single molecular force, different from its components, yet 
 capable of being resolved into them, and how this mole- 
 cular force is capable, under difterent circumstances, of
 
 26o 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L SYS TEM. 
 
 displaying actions totally or widely different from each 
 other. The soul might be defined as the substance of the 
 unity of sensation, or the substantial unity of sensation. It 
 is thus that the soul is the substantial form of the body, as 
 the Schoolmen said (see St. Thomas, Sum. TheoL, Pt. i. 
 q. 76). 
 
 The 
 human 
 soul a 
 principle 
 at once 
 sensitive 
 and intel- 
 lective. 
 
 122. 
 
 But the human soul not only feels, but also 
 intellectively perceives — perceives felt bodies and 
 itself. The human soul, therefore, is a principle 
 at once sensitive and intellective. 
 
 The difference between sense and intelligence, now so 
 frequently overlooked, was seen as early as Herakleitos, 
 who says that " Those who hear without intelligence are 
 like deaf persons ('Asurtrot liKovaaxmq Kwcpolai loiKctcn)," and 
 " Eyes and ears are evil witnesses to men with barbarous 
 souls {kukoI fiaprvpeg avOptoTTOKTi ocpOaXfxoi koi (bra, 
 ^ap^apovq ^'^xag Ixovtojv \ixov<yi .''] " Bywater, Heracliti 
 Ephesii Rcligtdcs, pp. 2, 3). The distinction was more 
 clearly brought out by Plato and Aristotle ; but both made 
 it far too wide, the former, by utterly separating the in- 
 telligible from the sensible world, the latter, by separating 
 the intellective from the sensitive in man, and giving him, 
 so to speak, two souls, one intellective and one sensitive. 
 St. Thomas and the Schoolmen did not go much beyond 
 Aristotle. They still continued to speak of the object of 
 sense, as well as the object of intelligence, and of a common 
 sense, as different from intelligence. Indeed, the true nature 
 of the distinction was never cleared up until Rosmini showed 
 that sense has only a term, while intelligence has an object, 
 and that in cognition this term and this object are correlated 
 as matter and form, as subject and object. This clearing 
 up would not have been possible without the previous dis- 
 tinction between the matter and form of cognition. That 
 this distinction found currency in philosophy, is mainly
 
 SUBJECT AND EGO. 261 
 
 due to Kant, although, as Rosmini shows, it was previously 
 made by Genovesi (1712-1769). That it was " <^;/«rw/ and, 
 in Italy, well known," does not seem correct. (See New 
 Essay, vol. i. § 328 n.). 
 
 123. 
 
 When this sensitive principle pronounces it- j^ ^hat 
 self, it uses the v^^ord / or Ego. /, therefore, is ^^fex-^ 
 a word which expresses the soul, but expresses [Je^^oJi 
 it in so far as it utters itself. It does not there- ^^/^ ,^^ 
 
 what sense 
 
 fore express the soul purely, but the soul invested it is called 
 with certain relations to itself — the soul in a state ^ip'*^ ^"^ 
 
 subject of 
 
 of development. If we desire, therefore, to form Psycho- 
 logy. 
 
 a clear conception of the soul, pure and simple, 
 we must carefully consider what the Ego contains, 
 and then remove from it all that part which is 
 known to have been added and acquired by the 
 operations of the soul itself. It is the Ego as 
 thus despoiled that is the principle and subject of 
 Psychology. 
 
 See above, under § 75. This is a most important distinc- 
 tion, and one which is, even to the present day, systematic- 
 ally and almost universally overlooked. The Ego is a self- 
 affirmed subject. Now, all affirmation belongs to the science 
 of Logic. Hence the Ego, as such, is not the subject of 
 Psychology, nor does any act of the Ego involving an 
 affirmation form part of that subject. Aristotle saw this 
 very plainl}^ and from his treatise On the Sold excluded 
 everything involving the recognition of true objectivity. 
 On the contrary, Herbert Spencer, who, as we have seen, 
 does not understand the nature of the distinction between 
 sensation and intelligence, introduces into his Psychology 
 all the processes of reasoning. This is exactly the same
 
 262 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 thing as making Biology a branch of Inorganic Chemistry ; 
 for there is certainly as much difference between objectified 
 and unobjectified sensation, as there is between animate 
 and inanimate matter. It is not necessary to say that the 
 soul's relation (objectively considered) to objectivity in 
 general falls within the domain proper of Psychology. 
 
 124. 
 
 Complete Proceeding in this way, we find, with the aid of 
 
 of the '°" Ideology, a more complete definition of the human 
 soid.^" soul, which may be thus expressed : — The human 
 
 soul is an intellective and sensitive subject or 
 principle, having by nature the intuition of being 
 and a feeling whose term is extended, besides cer- 
 tain activities consequent upon intelligence and 
 sensitivity. 
 
 It is instructive to compare this definition with that of 
 Aristotle, which for so many hundred years held possession 
 of the philosophical world. According to that philosopher, 
 "The soul is the first active form* of a physical body 
 having life in potentiality, and a body is such when it is 
 organized " (" ^vyi) Icttiv lvTaXi\Ha 1) Trpwrr] awjiaroq 
 (pvaiKov ^vvafxiQ Ztvriv e^^ovrog. Totovro cl o av y 6p- 
 yaviKov." De Animd, ii. i, 5 ; 411 b, 26 sq.) It will be 
 seen at a glance that, while this is the definition of the soul 
 as the principle of life, Rosmini's definition refers to the 
 soul as the principle of cognition. But the two are by no 
 means so distinct as at first sight might seem. This will 
 appear if we note how the former was understood by the 
 Schoolmen, and what by them seen to involve. St. Thomas 
 
 * On the meaning of evTeAexfio, see Trendelenburg, Aristot. De An., 
 Lib. III., p. 295, sqq. ; Eiese, Die Fhilosophie dcs Aristoteles, vol. i. pp. 355, 
 452, 479 sqq. ; ii. 129, 207 sq., 214 sq. ; Bonitz, Aristot. Metaphys., pp. 387 sq. 
 (1047 a, 30); Zeller, Fhilosophie der Gricchcn, vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 480; Teichmiiller, 
 Arislotelis£hc Forschungen, iii. pp. 55 sqq., 1 19 sqq., etc., etc.
 
 THE SOUL THE FORM OF THE BODY. 263 
 
 translates it thus : " Anima est actus corporis physici 
 potentia vitam habentis," and adds : " Comparatur igitur 
 anima ad corpus, sicut forma ad materiem." Hence it is 
 a standing principle with all orthodox Thomists that the 
 soul is the substantial form of the body.* And when they 
 say " the soul," they mean the intellective part of it, the 
 vovq or i/zi^xj) voriTiKi], that which Aristotle calls the place 
 of forms (roTToc tlSuiv) and the form of forms (tlSog eiSwv). 
 St. Thomas, in the conclusio of the article above cited, says, 
 " Since the intellective principle is that whereby man is 
 originally intelligent, whether it be called intellect or 
 intellective soul, it must be united to the human body as 
 form." t And this is correct, for the first active form of the 
 human body, as such, must be intelligence. This is easily 
 shown. The human body, as such, is the correlate term of 
 the unity of human sensation, and must, therefore, be deter- 
 mined by the same form as that unity. But the unity of 
 human sensation is intelligence. Since the unity of sensa- 
 tion must be something that is aware of all sensations, and 
 since one sensation cannot be aware of another, the unity 
 of sensation cannot be itself sensation. But that which is 
 aware of all sensations without being itself a sensation, is 
 intelligence. Hence, intelligence is the unity of human 
 sensation, and consequently the unity or substantial form 
 of the body, which is the correlate term of such sensation. 
 Hence Aristotle's definition, as correctly interpreted by the 
 Schoolmen, involves Rosmini's. The above reasoning may 
 seem somewhat scholastic and wire-drawn ; but it is the 
 sober truth. 
 
 It is worth while here to call attention to a definition 
 of the soul which was given in ancient times, and agrees 
 in several essential points with Rosmini's. It is that of 
 Porphyry, who in the eighteenth of his Sentences (Acpopfiai 
 irpoq TO. vor]Ta) says, " The soul is an essence, unextended, 
 
 * Zigliara, Siimma Philosophica, vol. ii. p. 138, says, "Anima humana 
 unitur corpori nostra ut vera ejus forma substantialis." 
 
 t " Cum principium intellectivum sit quo prime intelligithomo, sivc vocetur 
 intellectus, sive anima intellectiva, necesse est ipsum uniri corpori humano ut 
 formam " {Sii?n. 'J'hcol. i., q. 76, art. 4).
 
 264 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 immaterial, imperishable, endowed with essential, self- 
 derived life, possessing being." * This, of course, is a 
 definition of the soul as separated from its sensible term, 
 the body, and, as such, is very remarkable : first, because it 
 identifies the soul with life, as Rosmini does (see § 125, 2); 
 and second, because it attributes to it the possession of 
 being, which, according to Rosmini, is the essential form of 
 intelligence. Whether Porphyry saw all that this attribu- 
 tion involves, may be regarded as doubtful ; but when one 
 remembers that the whole of mediaeval philosophy had its 
 origin in a single sentence of the Eisagoge of this philo- 
 sopher,t one will not pronounce very dogmatically upon 
 the limits of his insight. Certain it is that very many of 
 his utterances coincide, in a most remarkable way, with 
 those of Rosimini, and seem to be based upon the same 
 principles. 
 
 Hence are 
 
 deduced 
 
 the other 
 
 properties 
 
 of the 
 
 human 
 
 soul. 
 
 Simplicity. 
 
 125. 
 
 From this definition, which expresses the es- 
 sence of the soul, may be deduced its properties, 
 the most important of which are these two — sim- 
 plicity and immortality. 
 
 The simplicity of the soul is shown by the 
 facts that it is a single principle, and that it is 
 unconditioned by space. That it is a single jDrin- 
 ciple, is evident ; for it is the same principle which 
 feels and understands. That it is unconditioned 
 by space, is shown from this, that the act of feel- 
 ing excludes extension through the opposition by 
 
 " 'H i|/iix^ ovaia ajueyedris, H'vAos, 'd(j)6apTos, fV ^airj irap' eavrrjs 4xov<Tr) rh 
 (rji', KeKr7]jjiiU7] rh ehai." Cf. my translation of these Sentences in the Journal 
 of Speculative Fhilosopliy, vol. iii. Another rendering is possible. 
 
 t See Haureau, De la Philosophie Scolastique, vol. i. cp. iv. ; cf. Ueberweg's 
 Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie (American translation), vol. i. 
 p. 365 sq. The sentence allu 'ed to refers to the nature of genera and species. 
 See Berlin edition of Aristotle, vol. iv. p. i a. S-13.
 
 IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 265 
 
 which it distinguishes itself from the felt extended, 
 as well as by the fact that it receives its form 
 from the idea, which is altogether free from space 
 and time. 
 
 The inimortality of the soul is proved from immor- 
 these considerations : First, the soul is the 
 principle which gives life to the body. Now, the 
 soul, being that which gives life, is itself life. For 
 this reason it cannot cease to be life, unless it be 
 annihilated. Hence, of itself it cannot die; it is 
 through itself immortal. Second, the form of the 
 intellieent soul is the eternal and immutable idea. 
 It is true that the soul, being in its nature contin- 
 gent, might be annihilated; but this could be done 
 only by God, who alone has the power to create, 
 and hence, also, to annihilate. Now, God anni- 
 hilates nothing that he has created, annihilation 
 being contrary to his attributes, as is shown by 
 Natiuml Theology. 
 
 " Since the body is the proximate cause of our sensa- 
 tions, and these are facts which happen in us without our 
 agency, while we are merely passive subjects, it follows 
 of necessity that we are not body. And since that which 
 the word WE expresses is the feeling and thinking sub- 
 ject, therefore this subject is a substance entirely different 
 from corporeal substance " {New Essay, vol. ii. § 668). It 
 follows directly that, if the soul is incorporeal, it is simple. 
 By simple is not meant that which is without distinction or 
 determination, but that which is entitatively and per se one. 
 The following table of the various significations of simple 
 is taken from a work of considerable merit recently pub- 
 lished (p. 232) : —
 
 266 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSPEM. 
 
 "Simplicity (or indivisibility) — 
 
 As to Essence, 
 
 when an entity (ejts) is not made 
 
 up of parts essentially diverse. 
 
 As to Extension or Entity, 
 
 when an entity cannot be divided 
 
 into parts entitatively different. 
 
 Negative, 
 when an entity of itself has nothing 
 that can be divided {e.g. whiteness 
 or any quality.) 
 
 Positive, 
 
 when an entity /^tj-^ excludes 
 
 division. 
 
 I 
 Merely Extnttsie, 
 
 when the form of the totality is external 
 
 (as in a mathematical figure or a word). 
 
 I 
 Intrinsic, 
 
 when the ground of totality 
 
 is internal. 
 
 Merely Natural, 
 when the whole is in the whole and 
 in each part 'exigitively' from internal 
 connection. 
 I 
 
 Simply Entitative, 
 when the whole is in the whole and 
 in each part entitatively (as in the 
 spirit). 
 
 Perfect, 
 when the parts perfectly require each 
 other (as in the horse).. 
 
 Imperfect, 
 when the parts imperfectly require 
 each other (as in the tape-worm)."* 
 
 The soul is positively, intrinsically, and entitatively 
 simple, so that the whole of it is in the whole and in each 
 of the parts.* That this is true, is a matter of simple 
 consciousness ; indeed, Avere it not true, consciousness 
 would not be possible. If the soul thought with one part 
 and felt with another, or thought or felt one thing with 
 one part and another with another, there would be required 
 some still higher unity in which both these parts were at 
 once present, otherwise there would be no unity of con- 
 sciousness. And this higher unity would be the true soul, 
 whatever the nature of its super-intelligent operations 
 might be. It is easy to see that entitative simplicity is 
 incompatible with materiality, at least as at present con- 
 ceived. But, if the immateriality of the soul follows from 
 its simplicity, from the former also follows its immortality. 
 
 * Institittiones PliilosophiiE Naturalis, scctindum Principia S. ThomcE 
 Aqtiinatis, by Tilmann Pesch, S. J. Freiburg in Breisgau, Herder, iSSo. 
 
 t Cf. Die Einheit des Seelenlcbens aiis den Principien der Aristotclischen 
 Philosophie eiitivickclt , von J. H. Schell, Freiburg in Breisgau, 1873.
 
 MEANING OF DEATH. 267 
 
 " If," says Rosmini, " the soul is a substance altogether 
 different from the body, we cannot from the death of the 
 body infer the death of the soul. Moreover, the word 
 death means merely the cessation in the body of the acts 
 of life and animation. Hence the word death refers only 
 to the body, and could not be attributed without absurdity 
 to that which is not body. ... It might, however, be a 
 matter of doubt whether man would retain a feeling of his 
 own when he was deprived altogether of bodily feeling, 
 and even of the body itself This doubt arises from 
 observing that nearly all the operations of human thought 
 require images or other bodily feelings, so that these cogni- 
 tions appear to be accompanied with a bodily feeling 
 rather than to be sensible themselves. But we hold that 
 even intellective operations are sensible in their essence, 
 because we believe that the essence of man himself consists 
 in feeling. . . . The objection, for the most part, disap- 
 pears, when we observe that, if intellective operations were 
 not sensible in their own way, they could not even become 
 so though animal feelings were added to them, since animal 
 sensibility presents to our perception nothing but itself. 
 Now, we can most readily distinguish what animal sensi- 
 bility, bound as it is to space, presents to us from what 
 the sensibility of merely intellective operations, free alto- 
 gether from space, presents. ... If intellective opera- 
 tions are accompanied with sensibility, we must say that 
 even the first of these, the immanent essential operation, 
 which we have called the intuition of universal being, is 
 sensible. Although, therefore, the soul were deprived of 
 animal feelings, divested of the body, and reduced to a pure 
 act intuiting being, it would, nevertheless, retain a feeling 
 of its own. But we must take care not to form a false and 
 impure concept of this spiritual feeling. We must not add 
 to it anything of the nature of bodily feeling. We must, 
 moreover, understand that the act of intuition does not at all 
 extend beyond its object (being), so that it is, so to speak, 
 a spiritual feeling of the object, revealing nothing but the 
 object which is its term ; but, being an activity, it has a 
 principle different from 'the object to which it adheres in a
 
 In what 
 
 268 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 mode essential to it, so that it cannot separate from this 
 without falHng into nought. Thus the peculiar sensibility 
 of this intuitive act is the consequence of the object 
 intuited by it. Without the intuition of the object, this act 
 would not be sensible, because it would not be at all. The 
 sensibility, therefore, of primitive intuition arises from the 
 object, as related to the subjective sentient principle. From 
 this we may conclude that the human soul, even when 
 separated from the body, retains a feeling of its own 
 (although without reflection), and, therefore, retains its 
 essence, which consists in feeling, and lives for ever" 
 {Psychology, §§ 134-139). 
 
 This is not widely different from Aristotle's view, 
 which is, that the intelligence generally is unconnected with 
 the body (see De Animd, i. i, 9, 10 ; 403 a, 3 sqq. : iii. 5, 2 ; 
 430 a, 22 sqq.). 
 
 When Rosmini says, " The soul, being that which 
 gives life, is life itself," the conclusion seems not to follow 
 from the premise. It really does, however ; for the soul is 
 a principle, and a principle has nothing to give but what it 
 is. Hence, if the soul gives life, it is life. 
 
 126. 
 
 We have said that the soul is an intellective 
 
 sense the 2SiA sensltlve principle, havino- by Its nature the 
 
 opinion of ^ '- Q J 
 
 Plato, that intuition of belnof and a feellno' whose term is 
 
 the body ... 
 
 is an ob- extended. The beiup' Intuited by the soul is alto- 
 
 stacle to ^ ^ ^ ■' 
 
 the soul, is gether indeterminate, so that, unless the soul had 
 
 false. 
 
 something else, It would be unable to have any 
 knowledge of a determinate thing, and its intel- 
 lectual development \vould be Impossible, not 
 from want of power, but from want of material. 
 The Creator has provided for this, by giving to 
 the human soul that feeling whose term Is the 
 extended, by giving It space and a body. This
 
 FUNCTION OF THE BODY. 269 
 
 feeling, which has an extended term or sensum, 
 capable of undergoing various modifications, sup- 
 plies the mind with the original matter of all its 
 intellective operations, from which it afterwards 
 draws all its cognitions. In this way human 
 knowledge unfolds itself. It was, therefore, an 
 error on the part of Plato to look upon the body 
 as a hindrance to the flight of the soul. The 
 truth is that, considered in itself, it is the instru- 
 ment whereby the soul develops and perfects 
 itself. But Plato's view has its justification, if, 
 instead of applying it to the nature of body, we 
 apply it to the corruption entailed upon the 
 animal nature by the first sin. 
 
 Human knowledge is a body of ideas or determinations 
 of being, which man is enabled to make by means of sensa- 
 tions, that reveal to him reality. Any sensation or group or 
 series of sensations, when objectified by means of being, 
 produces an idea, eternal, universal, necessary. An idea is 
 always a logically possible form of existence, and that 
 which is once logically possible is eternally, universally, and 
 necessarily so. Even Omnipotence cannot alter the logically 
 possible. 
 
 127. 
 
 Let us now consider a little more attentively The ex- 
 this extended term. It is double, space and body, term of 
 the latter being a force which diffuses itself in a double, 
 
 ,..■. /. (-^ ..,-.. space and 
 
 hmited part 01 space. bpace m itseli is im- body, and 
 movable, simple, illimitable, indivisible ; body is opposite 
 movable, limited, divisible, and hence composite. 
 In consequence of the variations which body
 
 rjo PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 continually undergoes, there takes place a con- 
 tinual variation in the term of the feeling, and 
 hence the immense variety of sensations and per- 
 ceptions, and the abundance of original material 
 supplied to human cognition. 
 
 The soul, as intelligent, has an object, unextended and 
 eternal ; as sensitive, it has a double term, whose essential 
 characteristic is extension, and one of whose parts is subject 
 to change, and, therefore, not eternal. Of course, extension, 
 being a primitive element of indefinable sense, does not 
 admit of any definition, except a relative or negative one. 
 We may say it is an element of the term or correlate of 
 feeling, or we may say it is interminable, immeasurable, 
 uninterrupted, that is, continuous ; but we can do no more. 
 And the reason of this lies in the nature of extension itself 
 which is merely relative and negative, relative to sense and 
 negative to limits. Extension has no substance, no noii- 
 menon, of its own. Its substance belongs to existing sensa- 
 tion. It is, therefore, purely phenomenal. This by no 
 means implies that it is not, or that it is delusive. On the 
 contrary, it is of the very essence of reality. Its relativity, 
 that is, its phenomenality, consists in this, that it is only a 
 moment in an entitatively simple act, of which the other side 
 is sensation. " Extension," says Rosmini, " is something in 
 external objects [whose reality is feeling]. It is also some- 
 thing in the fundamental feeling, in which, and in respect to 
 which, it has the nature of matter and term. Moreover, 
 extension is common to our sensations and to external 
 bodies \i.e. to sensations objectified] ; but, in so far as it is 
 in our sensations, we call it the matter of them ; in so far 
 as it is in external bodies, we call it the external term " {New 
 Essay, vol. ii. § 822, n.). 
 
 '^ Pure space \s the term, natural and not foreign, of the 
 sensitive principle. It is the term in which its activity 
 exhausts itself, and for this reason is called by us the 
 quiescent term, although from it activity begins, when cor- 
 poreal matter is added. We must observe that it is very
 
 PURE SPACE. 271 
 
 difficult to form a correct concept of pure space, because, 
 in order to do so, we must abstract from all bodies and 
 movements ; we must think neither of limits nor of deter- 
 minate places ; we must forget our own bodies. The 
 phenomenon of space which remains after this will appear 
 to many a zero ; but this is not really the case, because a 
 subtraction does not leave a difference equal to zero, unless 
 that which is subtracted is equal to that from which it is 
 subtracted. Here, however, we have only subtracted bodies 
 from the phenomenon and from total apprehension : hence 
 there is left the remainder, space. At the same time, this 
 phenomenon of residual space does not lend itself to the 
 imagination, which deals only with bodies, nor to measure- 
 ment, because all measure is posterior to it ; nevertheless, 
 it is something which, when compared to space measured 
 and distinguished by means of bodies, seems a potential 
 space. What renders it difficult to see that space is not 
 something separate from its principle, but merely a natural 
 appurtenance of it, merely its complement, is this : that our 
 minds have a tendency to think the space which already 
 clothes the foreign reality, internal or external, whereas, as 
 we have said, we must look away from this reality, and 
 conceive space pure. It is only then that we see it to be 
 in itself nothing external, and to be most closely united 
 to the principle which feels it. Furthermore, we must 
 reflect that we, men, are not the principle of space, but are 
 rational principles ; whence it is no wonder that space 
 appears to us as something different from us. Even the 
 abstract animal is not the principle of space ; but this 
 principle exists in it. as the genus in the species ; whence even 
 the animal itself, in so far as it is species and individual, 
 must feel in space something given to it, as a generic nature, 
 and not something which itself produces, as the animating 
 principle of its body. 
 
 " We therefore distinguish three things : 
 (i) An end of activity, the quiescent term. 
 
 (2) A final activity, the term which draws life from the 
 
 activity of the principle. 
 
 (3) A foreign term, which can never be a quiescent term, 
 
 but must always be an active one.
 
 2/2 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 " Hence the space, which is conceived as the end of the 
 activity of the sensitive principle, when this, having reached 
 its extreme, comes to rest, and which, for this reason, is the 
 proper term of that principle, being distinguished from it 
 only by hypothetical abstraction, could never form the foreign 
 real term of a principle of another nature, for the simple 
 reason that it has no activity, other than that of its principle 
 in which it terminates. On the contrary, the final activity, 
 besides being the proper term of its own principle, can 
 become the foreign term of a principle of another nature, 
 because it has activity and reality and abstraction from the 
 principle from whose act it proceeds. For this reason it 
 can connect itself with the reality of another principle and 
 communicate to it part of its power. Not every proper 
 term, therefore, can become the foreign term of another 
 principle, but only that which is a final activity, and not 
 simply an end of activity. The latter, when separated from 
 its principle, alone offers to the mind a negative and relative 
 concept. 
 
 " The sensitive principle, therefore, is primarily con- 
 stituted a subject-being by its entitative force, terminating in 
 pure space, which is, accordingly, its primitive form. But 
 the sensitive principle, in this form, is a real indeterminate. 
 By this is not meant something in itself indeterminate, for 
 nothing real can exist indeterminate, but a relative indeter- 
 minate, that is, indeterminate compared with other reals, 
 such as, in the present case, the principles that animate 
 matter. The real indeterminate, however, is merely a real 
 geims, which in itself does not lack indetermination, but 
 which exists identical, with other differences, in other reals. 
 To this principle, so constituted, is united a second ulterior 
 term — corporeal matter, which is what specifies it as an 
 animating principle. Now, the foreign reality, uniting it- 
 self to the principle of space as its term, has to render 
 it its term by feeling it, for the reason that the sensitive 
 principle can have no term but the felt ; whence the first 
 felt thing which it produces in this term is space itself. 
 Indeed, having space as the end of its activity and as its 
 primitive form, it can feel nothing which is not in space.
 
 EXTENSION ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE. 27Z 
 
 The circumstance, therefore, that the foreign reahty which 
 becomes the term of the sensitive principle is extended, is 
 due to sentimentation, that is, to the act of the principle of 
 space, in which space it is obliged to feel all that it does 
 feel, space being the end of its activity. This first corporeal 
 term is what constitutes the body of the animate. That 
 this body occupies a greater or less space, depends upon the 
 number of its atoms ; but the measure of the atom certainly 
 is, and must be, dependent on the inner laws to which the 
 activity of the sensitive principle of space is subject, in 
 relation to the quantity of reality in the atom itself. To 
 this relation between what we shall call the intensive 
 quantity of the corporeal reality and the comparative 
 quantity of extension with which the sensitive principle 
 clothes it, is to be referred the origin of the first corporeal 
 extension. But hence we gather that the absolute extension 
 of a body is not cognizable, and, indeed, does not exist at 
 all. The extension that exists is the relative extension of 
 bodies and atoms to each other, the relation between the 
 extension of body (relative extension) and the extension of 
 pure space (absolute extension) being incommensurable. 
 And there is lacking not only the maximum measure 
 applicable to limited extension, but also the minimum 
 measure, because there is no absolute minimum of extension 
 that can serve to measure the extension of bodies them- 
 selves. 
 
 " The extension, therefore, which is felt in body through 
 sensible touch, and which differentiates it from empty space, 
 is the work of the sensitive principle having space for its 
 essential term ; it is the extended felt produced, in which 
 extended felt is contained, as a substratum, a foreign reality. 
 And this, indeed, is the origin of the concept of substratum, 
 of which the ancients made so much use, extending it im- 
 properly to all substances, even spiritual ones. It is on 
 account of this foreign reality contained in the term of our 
 feeling, that the felt bodily term appears to us as double, 
 that is, as subjective and as extra-subjective ; and for the 
 same reason that the same extension also presents itself as 
 double — on the one hand, as subjective and belonging to the 
 
 T
 
 274 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 felt, something of ours, that is, of the sentient subject's ; on 
 the other, as extra-subjective and belonging to material 
 body, something different from the sentient subject, from 
 which we divide it by thetic abstraction, but which, in truth, 
 does not present itself to us as existing, except as a foreign 
 element existing inside feeling. Subjective extension is 
 called internal, extra-subjective, external extension. 
 
 " Such is the origin of the wonderful phenomenon which 
 is called external world — I mean the external world known 
 and felt by ourselves. Indeed, if we were capable of remov- 
 ing from our minds the images of bodies, and retaining pure 
 space alone, directing our attention only to it, we should 
 readily convince ourselves that, in such a case, it would 
 never enter our minds to say that space was something 
 ext^nal rather than internal. This distinction would not 
 exist for us. We should rather feel pure space united to us 
 as our pure feeling, which constitutes us. No movement, 
 nay, not even the possibility or impossibility of a move- 
 ment, would enter our thoughts. But when we unite to 
 space another term, viz., body, then new kinds of phe- 
 nomena manifest themselves. On the one hand, this new 
 reality given to the sensitive principle cannot be its term, 
 unless this term renders it felt to itself; on the other, this 
 term cannot render it totally felt to itself, because it is a 
 foreign reality, which cannot totally belong to it. But the 
 part felt and the part not felt are indivisible. The former 
 comes from the sensible action which the sensitive principle 
 itself performs upon the foreign reality ; the latter, from the 
 foreign principle to which said reality properly belongs, and 
 which furnishes and, so to speak, yields it to the sensitive 
 principle. The felt, therefore, contains a non-felt foreign 
 element, and the sentient, not being able to feel it as a felt 
 nature, nevertheless feels its existence as a refractory and 
 opposing nature. Now, since the first law of the sentient is 
 that it gives extension to what it feels, it clothes not only 
 the felt, but also this diverse and refractory nature with the 
 same extension. In this way, in so far as there exists a 
 felt nature clothed with extension, the sentient recognizes 
 the extension in its own proper feelings, that is, in the terms
 
 THE EXTERNAL WORLD. 275 
 
 which it feels ; but in so far as the same extension clothes 
 that nature which it feels as refractory — contained in its 
 term of feeling, but resisting sentimentation — in so far it 
 has the feeling ox perception of an external world ; that is, a 
 world different from its own feeling, not existing purely 
 through the act of feeling, but existing in the felt through 
 some other cause, different from that of the act of its own 
 feeling. 
 
 "Thus is explained the reason why, on the one hand, it 
 seems that the soul is in the body, and on the other that 
 the body is in the soul.* If we take the reality as felt, it 
 can only be in the soul ; but, if we consider the reality as 
 something different from the feeling and impenetrable to it, 
 it appears that this very reality as subject (and it is only 
 a dialectical subject) receives the feeling, and, hence, the 
 soul. It was this fact that induced Aristotle to say that 
 the soul was an act of the body, as if the body were the 
 subject of this act [see above, under § 124]. 
 
 " In the same way is cleared up the great difficulty in 
 which philosophers, especially modern ones, have involved 
 themselves in order to discover the communication between 
 the soul, which they considered as internal and having in it 
 all feeling, and the external world, which they considered 
 as a reality existing in itself and not felt. They did not 
 observe that the non-felt external world, taken by itself, 
 as outside the feeling, was a pure abstraction, and that the 
 question must refer, not to this abstract entity, but to the 
 true and real world. They did not observe that the true 
 and real world, although, indeed, independent in its reality, 
 which is foreign and refractory to the act of feeling, never- 
 theless exists nowhere but in the felt itself, as a content in a 
 containing form, and that it is only because it is thus con- 
 tained that we perceive it, as a refractory and opposing 
 element, cognizing it thus and not otherwise. It is of this 
 world contained in feeling that we have spoken ; of no 
 other could we speak, to no other even refer. . . . 
 
 "It is to be observed that the space with which the 
 
 * Cf. St. Thomas, Szun. Thcol., i, q. 52, art. i : " Anima enim est in cor- 
 pore ut continens et non lit contenta."
 
 276 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L S YS TEM. 
 
 animating principle clothes its felt terms appears as double ; 
 whence we have distinguished it as, on the one hand, internal 
 and subjective, in which form it has relation to feelings, on 
 the other as external and objective, in which form it has 
 relation to reality considered in itself, and constitutes the 
 external world. Moreover, this second space is always 
 measured or measurable, whereas the first is in itself im- 
 measurable, and receives measure only from the relation of 
 identity which it has to the other. We have not, moreover, 
 by nature, a feeling of measured space (and from measure 
 it receives its externality to our body and that absolute 
 mode in which it is considered, and which springs from the 
 concept of reality considered solely in itself, as extraneous 
 to the felt) ; but we acquire the feeling and the concept of 
 measured space from sensible experience and from motion, 
 as we have shown in the Ideology [§§ Zj2-%']'}^\ When, 
 therefore, we clothe one of our own terms of feeling with 
 external and measured space, then — 
 
 (i) We make use of a natural instinct, which induces us to 
 clothe with extension all that we feel, because the 
 principle of space is our generic nature. 
 
 (2) The space which we thus employ, in so far as it is ex- 
 
 ternal, is acquired. 
 
 (3) What guides us in applying this external measure of 
 
 space to terms of feeling is habit and the similarity of 
 cases. We learn from experience that such or such 
 measure of external space corresponds to such or such 
 term of feeling" {Theosophy, vol. iii. §§ 1449-1453). 
 
 Connec- 
 tion of 
 soul and 
 body. 
 The in- 
 compre- 
 hensibility 
 of this 
 connection 
 does not 
 gi/e us the 
 
 128. 
 
 But here naturally arises the question: How 
 can an extended sensimi be presented to the soul, 
 vi^hich is a simple principle ? Before answering 
 this question, we must observe that the two 
 clauses which form the terms of the proposition, 
 viz., that the soul is a simple principle, and that
 
 UNION OF SOUL AND BODY. 277 
 
 it has, as the term of its feehng, an extended, right to 
 
 ^ ^ • -i ^ r t- i • doubt the 
 
 express indubitable tacts, ror this reason, even fact, 
 if we should be unable to explain how this can 
 be the case, we should not be able to deny the 
 fact, but should be obliged to confess that here 
 was one of those many mysteries which it is given 
 to few or none to penetrate. 
 
 The problem of the connection between mind and body 
 has occupied the attention of thinkers from the days of 
 Demokritos, and perhaps earlier, to our own. A list of the 
 chief opinions entertained on the subject before Aristotle's 
 time will be found in that philosopher's work On the Soul, 
 Book i. Perhaps the most considerable attempt made in 
 ancient times to clear up the matter was that of Plotinus 
 {Enji., i. 8 ; iv. 8, etc.). In modern times, the subject, though 
 not dropped, has come to be included, along with the ques- 
 tions of free will, the origin of evil, and some others, in the 
 list of insoluble problems, which only persons capable of 
 attempting the quadrature of the circle will waste time on. 
 Nevertheless, even those who most deprecate all attempts 
 to fathom the nature of mind are obliged to admit that 
 it is " one substance with two sets of properties, two sides, 
 the physical and the mental — a double-faced ujiity," and 
 that "the same being is, by alternate fits, object and subject, 
 under extended and under unextended consciousness " 
 (Alex. Bain, Body and Mind, pp. 138, 196). 
 
 " As soon," says Rosmini, " as it is known that the soul 
 is not extended, and that it is not a mathematical point, 
 there is no difficulty in conceiving that it does not occupy 
 any place, or have one position rather than another. 
 Hence, in the different parts of the body, we may observe 
 the traces of its action, the various effects of its operation ; 
 but itself we find in no part, either great or small, either 
 in the whole body or in any point of it. The reason of 
 this is, that its mode of being bears no comparison, pro- 
 portion, or similitude to that of anything that is matter 
 or a property of matter. It has with matter a relation of
 
 278 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 action, of passion . . . and, strictly speaking, a relation 
 of feeling and nothing more " {Anthropology, § 103 ; cf. 
 New Essay, vol. ii. §§ 721, 988 sq.). 
 
 At present, the philosophy or science of unextended 
 existence is so little developed, and, indeed, so little con- 
 sidered, that such doctrines as the above seem to hang in 
 the air and make no impression. So much do we require 
 space in order fully to grasp the nature of an idea or 
 principle, that we are inclined to believe the truth of 
 such idea or principle to depend upon space. We are 
 never entirely sure of the truth of any intellectual entity 
 until, in imagination at least, we have projected it, in some 
 form or another, upon space and made a figurate concept 
 of it, and we are, therefore, always somewhat sceptical and 
 a little contemptuous in regard to entities which, like the 
 soul, refuse to be, in any way, so projected. But the soul 
 has to be accepted as a fact, and part of that fact is its 
 non-extension, coupled with a relation of energy to the 
 extended. Porphyry, who lived in an age when the science 
 of the unextended was not in such a backward state as 
 it is now, wrote : " Things essentially incorporeal are not 
 locally present in things corporeal : they are present in 
 them by an act of volition, tending toward them in the 
 way wherein it is their nature to tend. Though not present 
 in them locally, they are present in them by relation." * 
 
 129. 
 
 The sen- Let US HOW take up the question of how the 
 
 cipk feels term of the unextended soul can be extended, 
 bocTy^with and, leaving space out of view for the present, 
 mmgkd^^ let US cousider only bodies. It is plain that the 
 fact to be explained is still twofold, inasmuch as 
 we feel two kinds of bodies widely distinct from 
 
 * " Ta /ca9' kavra acrw/xaro, ov roTLKcis TrapSura ro7s auifiaffi, irapeffTiv avTols orav 
 $ou\TiTai, Trphs aiiTO. pexpavra ^ Kol -rrecpvKe ^eireiv. dAAa roiriKcos avTots ov 7iap6i/Ta, 
 Tjj (7X *'"■«' Tapej-Ti;/ avTo7s" {Sententia, iii. ; cf. iv-vii.). 
 
 with much 
 activity,
 
 RELATION OF EXTENDED AND UNEXTENDED. 279 
 
 each other. In the first place, we feel the body 
 which we call our own and which accompanies 
 the soul into whatever portion of space it tran- 
 sports itself; in the second, we feel bodies 
 different from our own, and feel them, too, as 
 foreign to us : we feel them because they abruptly 
 modify our own bodies, which alone are con- 
 tinually felt. If, then, we could explain how the 
 soul continually feels its own body, we should 
 have no difficulty in explaining how it feels the 
 external bodies which modify this same body of 
 its own. Indeed, we must observe how the sen- 
 sitive principle feels its own body. It feels it, 
 not through simple passivity, but through a pas- 
 sivity mixed with a great deal of action. This 
 is clear from the fact that feeling is not only an 
 act of the sentient principle and a continuous act 
 in respect to its own body, but is, moreover, an 
 act so potent, that by means of it the sentient 
 principle — that is, the soul— continually modifies 
 and disposes its own body, and produces many 
 movements and chang-es in it. Meanwhile, the 
 body, as something inert, submits to this action of 
 the sentient principle, in which consists the inti- 
 
 The sen- 
 mate union of said principle with the body, tient prin- 
 
 ciplc feels 
 
 When we admit this, we can easily understand a foreign 
 how, if there takes place in a body, under the the body 
 control of the soul, a change independent of that us power 
 soul, and even opposed to its continuous action, comes a 
 it should feel a resistance, a violence ; in other dependent" 
 words, a foreign body. pStoU.
 
 28o 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 There 
 would be 
 no diffi- 
 culty in 
 under- 
 standing 
 how the 
 soul 
 
 should feel 
 external 
 bodies, if 
 we could 
 under- 
 stand how, 
 being a 
 simple 
 principle, 
 it can have 
 an ex- 
 tended 
 term. 
 
 130. 
 
 From this fact we may deduce an ontological 
 principle, which is, that a sentient principle, be- 
 sides its own spontaneous feeling, also feels and 
 receives into itself, without losing any of its own 
 simplicity, a foreign force opposed to its instinc- 
 tive and spontaneous action, and even aids it. 
 
 When we have explained how the soul feels 
 within itself somethinof foreign to it — that is to 
 say, an activity which resists or even stimulates 
 its own — then there is no difficulty in explaining 
 the secondary qualities of external bodies, colours, 
 tastes, odours, etc. Since all these belong to the 
 soul's own body, as the term of its feeling, the 
 only difficulty remaining is that of the extension 
 of bodies ; that is, the question which we first 
 proposed : How can the soul, being a simple 
 principle, have extension as its term ? 
 
 All philosophers are agreed that the substance of the 
 soul, however we may conceiv^e it, must be simple and 
 unchangeable, a something that remains identical in the 
 midst of all change (see Herbert Spencer, Psychology, 
 vol. i. pt. ii. cap. i. § 59). Even those who consider the 
 soul to be merely, as Spencer puts it, " a circumscribed 
 aggregate of activities," see that " the cohesion of these 
 activities, one with another, throughout the aggregate, 
 compels the postulation of a something of which they are 
 the activities" (;// sup., § 6'^. In other words, Spencer 
 admits Rosmini's principle of substance or cause, as 
 essential to the conception of activity.
 
 SENSATION THE GROUND OF CONTINUITY. 281 
 
 131. 
 
 The terms of this question, when closely con- a close 
 sidered, so far from containing the contradiction [^^m oAw's 
 which at first sight they seem to imply, are the showsThat 
 expression of the simple and only truth of the Ii,ou^does 
 matter. The outcome of this truth is this : The [)°g 'j^ '"g 
 continuously extended cannot exist save in a P^^'^' ^"^ 
 
 ■' in a prin- 
 
 simple principle, as the term of its act. If the I^^p''^. ^"^' 
 
 ■'■•'■ ir ' bracing 
 
 case were otherwise, there would be no p^round '^"" ^^^ 
 
 •"^ at once, 
 
 for the continuity of the parts assigrnable in this ^^d hence 
 
 \ ^ ^ that the 
 
 extended term, since the existence of one part continuous 
 
 cannot ex- 
 terminates with that part, and does not contain ist, except 
 
 .as the term 
 
 the ground of the other part which adheres to it. of the act 
 
 of a simple 
 
 The ground of continuity, therefore, does not lie principle. 
 in the single parts, but in a principle, and that a 
 simple one, w^hich embraces all the parts at once. 
 Moreover, but for this principle, the parts them- 
 selves, of which we suppose the continuous to be 
 made up, would vanish the instant we tried to 
 look for them ; for, the extended being divisible 
 ad iiidejinitum, the first parts of it could never be 
 found, and, indeed, do not exist. It is not pos- 
 sible, therefore, to consider the continuous as an 
 aggregate of parts, and yet every part of it assign- 
 able by thought is outside every other, and has 
 an existence independent of every other. It is 
 impossible, therefore, that the continuous, as a 
 whole, should exist otherwise than by a single act 
 in the simple principle which feels it.
 
 282 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 This section expresses one of the important doc- 
 trines of Rosmini's system, viz., that the principle of all 
 continuity is sensation ; that even space is continuous 
 only through and to something in which all the parts of 
 it are at once present. That this something is not ex- 
 tended is clear. If it were, it would have to contain some 
 higher principle in which all its parts were simultaneously 
 present, and the same difficulty as before would occur. 
 The only way, therefore, in which extension or space can 
 be continuous, or in which each part can so involve the 
 rest as to be separable from them only mentally, is that 
 the unity of the parts shall be constituted by something 
 having the form of sensibility, that is, something in which 
 the whole is present in each assignable part. That space 
 involves a sensitive principle is, therefore, manifest. We 
 must not conclude, however, that this sensitive principle 
 actually feels, as a sensitive principle connected with a 
 body does ; but merely that it is something which, if con- 
 nected with a body, would feel. Neither must we conclude 
 that space is simply the correlate or term of the various 
 sensitive principles connected with bodies, as in men and 
 animals, and, therefore, that there are as many spaces as 
 there are such principles. On the contrary, it is perfectly 
 plain that there is but one space, in and through which 
 all sensitive principles communicate with each other. The 
 truth is that the sensitive principle of space is the whole, 
 whereof all other sensitive principles are but determinate 
 parts, or, more correctly, embodied manifestations. When 
 these other particular sensitive principles become disem- 
 bodied, they return into their universal principle, except 
 in so far as they are prevented from doing so by their 
 union with something which has not space for its term, 
 that is, with intelligence, whose object and form is being 
 (cf. under § 127). 
 
 "I take as the object of my contemplation," says Ros- 
 mini, " any body, and I ask myself, What is the charac- 
 teristic and essential property of this body } I reply, What 
 forms the characteristic and essential property of this body, 
 as I conceive it (and I always speak only of what I con-
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF SPACE. 283 
 
 ceive), is that every part of it is outside of every other. I 
 see also that what I affirm of this body, I may affirm of 
 every other body. Hence I conclude that body is a being 
 of such essence that every part assignable in it by thought, 
 whether great or small, is outside of every other. 
 
 " Having fixed this essential property of body, I wish 
 now to see whether body can be the sentient principle itself, 
 or w^hether to suppose so would involve contradiction. In 
 order to arrive at clearness in this matter, I reason as fol- 
 lows : — Let it be supposed that sensitivity adheres to 
 body as a property of it. Then, obviously, all the parts that 
 I can assign in it will be sentient. But as every part of it 
 is outside of every other part, through the essential nature 
 of body, and no one goes beyond its own limits, it must 
 follow, according to the supposition, that likewise the sen- 
 sitivity adhering to these parts will not go beyond their 
 limits, and hence the sensitivity of one part will be outside 
 that of all the other parts. If this were the case, the sen- 
 sitivity would no longer be truly a single sensitive principle; 
 but there would be as many such principles as there were 
 parts in the body in question, and each of these principles 
 would not be able to feel the entire body, but each only its 
 own part, not going beyond it to the others, for the reason 
 assigned, viz., that each part to which the sentient principle 
 adheres is outside of every other. Now, it is clear that the 
 parts which may be thought and marked in a body may be 
 divided and subdivided indefinitely, and that, however far 
 we carry this division, each of the assignable parts of which 
 the body is essentially composed is outside of the others. 
 Consequently, the sensitivity of each of these minute 
 particles will be outside of the sensitivity of all the other 
 minute particles. Moreover, no particle can be rendered so 
 minute that particles still more minute cannot be assigned 
 in it ; which is the same thing as saying that we may go 
 on indefinitely assigning sensitive principles without ever 
 arriving at an ultimate sensitive principle. Finally, we may 
 make one or other of two suppositions — the one, that each 
 particle always remains extended, and, therefore, with parts 
 always located outside of each other ; the other (which,
 
 284 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 however, I have elsewhere shown to be absurd), that, by 
 dint of division, each extended particle comes at last to be 
 changed into simple points. In this second case, the sen- 
 sitivity would adhere to simple points and would be in- 
 capable of feeling anything extended. In the other case, 
 the true seat of sensitivity would never be found. In either 
 case, the same consequence would follow : the particle 
 remaining extended, and every point assignable in the 
 extended being outside of every other, it would always 
 result that the sensitivity adhering to each point could 
 never go beyond such point, because the point does not go 
 beyond itself Therefore, once more, the sensitive principle 
 would not be capable of feeling the extended. 
 
 " From this reasoning we derive a most important and 
 undeniable truth, viz., that the extended cannot feel 
 the extended. . . . Since extension, therefore, forms an 
 essential property of bodies, it is clear that the essential 
 properties of bodies contradict the essential properties of 
 feeling. Feeling, therefore, cannot exist in the extended, 
 but only in a perfectly simple subject, to which all the 
 extended is simultaneously present " {Psychology, §§ 94-97)- 
 
 In order to understand the following quotation it is 
 necessary to know that, according to Rosmini, the ultimate 
 elements of matter are animate ; that each atom has, united 
 with it and forming its unity or atomicity, a sensitive 
 principle. He holds, moreover, that, when atoms chemically 
 combine, their sensitive principles become one. With this 
 view, he, of course, sees no difficulty in accepting the doc- 
 trine of spontaneous generation. It is, indeed, difficult to 
 see what could form a unity in anything other than a 
 principle having the form of sense, and existing altogether 
 independent of space or extension (see Psychology, vol. i. 
 §§ 500 sqq.). 
 
 " All the phenomena presented by bodily feeling pre- 
 suppose that every sensitive soul has for its natural term 
 solid space, or, if the expression be preferred, unmeasured 
 space, within which the corporeal terms of feeling expand 
 in a space limited and measured by determinate boundaries. 
 If to this doctrine we add that of the animation of the
 
 THE PRINCIPLE OF SPACE. 285 
 
 elements of matter, it will follow that the corporeal elements 
 described by us resemble, in a certain way, the monads of 
 Leibniz, which are representatives of the universe. Our 
 elements, or, rather, our first sentient principles, would not, 
 indeed, be representatives of the universe in the sense in 
 which the monads of Leibniz were supposed to be, because 
 that great man supposed these to represent the universe 
 with all that it contains, corporeal as well as spiritual 
 beings, whereas our sensitive principles embrace only 
 unlimited, unmeasured space, in which corporeal beings 
 subsist. . . . 
 
 " Having reached the result stated above, ... we are 
 now obliged to propose to ourselves the question : Can there 
 be a sentient principle which feels nothing but solid, 
 unlimited space ; and if there were such, would it be an 
 individual .-'... 
 
 " We say that the concept of such a principle involves 
 no absurdity, and, if there were such a principle, it would 
 certainly be an individual, on account of the simplicity and 
 reality attached to the nature of principle and of such a 
 principle. But hence there springs a consequence of some 
 moment, which is, that there could only be one such indi- 
 vidual. If two principles had an identical term, such as 
 unlimited space, they could not in any way have a distinct 
 reality, and hence they would not be two, but one ; reality 
 being the principle of individuation. Now, that such 
 principles could not have a distinct reality, is proved in this 
 way. Principles, as such, have no activity or reality but 
 what they receive from their terms. If with the imagina- 
 tion we add any other reality to them, they will no longer 
 be mere principles, as the hypothesis requires. If, there- 
 fore, the term is one and identical, the reality and activity 
 of the correlative principle must likewise be one and 
 identical. But solid, unlimited space is one and identical. 
 Therefore the correlative principle of this term must 
 also be one and identical. ... If we admit this, what 
 relation will such a single principle bear to the sensitive 
 souls of bodies .^ These will rise and individuate them- 
 selves within this principle by means of new terms, that is,
 
 286 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 corporeal ones.* This primitive principle might receive, in 
 a certain improper sense, the name of common soul, or, 
 more correctly, principle of sensitive souls (corporeal feel- 
 ing). The individuality of these souls would remain intact ; 
 but they would have a common act and a special act. This 
 special act would constitute their proper reality and sub- 
 stance, and hence their substantial difference, and this 
 proper reality would be the principle of their individuation. 
 This would agree with the doctrine of St. Thomas, that 
 matter is the principle of the individuation of souls ; 
 although this would hold good only for purely sensitive 
 souls. In this there seems to be no contradiction " 
 {Psychology,%\ 554-5 59)- 
 
 The doctrine which Rosmini here attributes to St. 
 Thomas, and which the latter frequently repeats,! is, as 
 every one knows, due to Aristotle, who says that " matter 
 is chiefly and properly the subject of generation and the 
 condition of decay " (" "kcsTi St v\\\ ladXiara inlv koX Kvpiwg to 
 VTT OKU jjLivov jevieTEwg Koi (pOopag ^ektikov." De Gen., \. 4 ; 320, 
 a. 2 sq.). It is true that Aristotle does not say, in as many 
 words, that matter is the principle of individuation ; but it 
 follows directly from the above statement. Specific dif- 
 ferences and generic differences, of course, belong to species 
 and genera (aSj) koi yevrj) themselves ("eTretS/j \gti to fiev Xoyog 
 TO 8' vXt}, oaai /niv iv rw Xoyio tlaiv evavT lOTrjTsg aStt woioixn 
 ^ia(popav, oaai c Iv rw avvuX^pfiivi^ ry vXrj ov ttoiovctiv." 
 MetapJi. X. 9 ; 1058, a. 37 sqq.). Without matter, ideas, to 
 use Rosmini's phrase, could not have subsistence. Each 
 would remain a simple logical possibility, ideal, not real. 
 Though the doctrine that individuation is the result of 
 matter was not original with the Schoolmen, they derived 
 from it another doctrine which, it must be admitted, Ari- 
 stotle never dreamt of, viz., that the angels, being im- 
 * Cf. the lines of Tennyson (Epilogue to In Memoriani) : — 
 
 " A soul shall draw from out the vast 
 And strike his being into bounds, 
 
 And, moved through life of lower phase, 
 Result in man, be born and think. " 
 t E.g. Sjtvi. Theolog., i. q. 3, art. 3, concl. ; q. 54, 3, 2 ; q. 56, i, 2 ; 
 q. 75, 4 and 5 ; q. 86, i and 3, concl., etc., etc.
 
 THE FUNDAMENTAL FEELING. 287 
 
 material existences, and thus lacking the principle of 
 individuation, are of necessity each a distinct species.* 
 This doctrine, nevertheless, finds a parallel in Aristotle's 
 theory that the stars are eternal and divine.f 
 
 132. 
 
 Pursuing these investigations further, we come 
 to the following results : — 
 
 (i) That the sentient principle, or sentient The first 
 
 ^ ^ _ ^ . term of 
 
 soul, has for its first term pure extension, or un- the sensi- 
 tive soul 
 
 measured space. is unmea- 
 
 sured 
 
 (2) That it has for its second term a limited space. 
 force diffused in space. Though this force, accor- JenrisThe 
 dingly, is a limited measure of space, space is ^,°^^|^|^ j^ 
 not thereby sundered or made discontinuous. ^"f°"^s. 
 This force is the soul's own body, which is in- 
 formed by it and is the seat of all its corporeal 
 feelings. 
 
 (3) That the soul feels its own body with a Funda- 
 fundamental feeling always identical, although feeling, 
 susceptible of variation in its accidents. By 
 means of this fundamental feeling no distinct 
 limits are assigned to the body, which, accord- 
 ingly, has no distinct figure in the feeling of the 
 soul. 
 
 (4) That this body is modified by the action External 
 of other bodies external and foreign to the soul. 
 These modifications, in so far as they are felt, 
 are called external sensations, and are of different 
 
 sensations. 
 
 * Vid. Sttm. Theolog., i. q. 50, art. 2 sq., etc., etc. Cf. Sum. conl7-a 
 Gentes, iii. ch. 43. 
 
 t Vid. Melaph., xi. 8 ; 1073, a. 34 : sq. : De Miindo, 2; 391, b. 16 sq.
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L SYS TEM. 
 
 How mea- 
 sured 
 space is 
 presented 
 to feeling. 
 
 kinds, according to the different organs of the 
 body. But all these sensations give us a feeling 
 of extended surface only, and by means of these 
 surface sensations our own bodies acquire limits 
 and a determinate figure felt by the soul. 
 
 (5) That our own bodies, as well as external 
 bodies, occupy only one part of space, and are 
 able to move in it, that is, to change place. 
 These movements become the measure of so 
 many parts of space, and thus there is presented 
 to feeling, under certain conditions, a measured 
 space, which may be indefinitely added to, since 
 the possibility of movement is indefinite. 
 
 T\\Q. fiindaviental feeling, which plays so conspicuous a 
 part in Rosmini's theory of cognition, has already been 
 alluded to (under § 80). It is the feeling which the soul at 
 all times has of its body, and is the direct result and form 
 of the combination of the two. It has its seat in the sen- 
 sitive parts of the body, and is entirely distinct from life. 
 It is, so to speak, the calm ocean of feeling, of which all 
 particular feelings are so many ruffles or waves. " When 
 we perceive our own bodies, through the fundamental feel- 
 ing, which is given to us by our being alive, we perceive 
 our bodies as one with us. They become in this way, 
 through individual union with our spirits, part of the sen- 
 tient subject " {New Essay, vol. ii. § 702). Of course such 
 a feeling as this, if undisturbed and uninterrupted, is not 
 likely to enter into consciousness. But " we must dis- 
 tinguish between the existence of a feeling in us and the 
 attention we pay to it. We may very well experience a 
 sensation or a feeling, without reflecting on it or being 
 conscious of it ; now, without reflecting on it and thereby 
 acquiring consciousness of it, we should never be able to 
 say to ourselves that we had experienced that feeling ; nay, 
 if we could not observe it, we might pertinaciously deny it.
 
 FUNDAMENTAL FEELING. 289 
 
 . . . He who has not been able to distinguish feeling from 
 the consciousness of feeling, has never come to understand the 
 essential difference between sensation and idea. Sensation 
 can never become aware of itself ; it is the understanding 
 that becomes aware of sensation. The consciousness which 
 we receive of sensation is nothing but the intellective per- 
 ception of it. . . . Although this feeling [the fundamental 
 feeling] exists, it must be very difficult now to recognize 
 and seize it, since we are not in the habit of attending to 
 anything in us, except when we feel a change. Where no 
 change takes place, there is no consciousness, no com- 
 parison, no reflection. At the same time, although a change is 
 necessary in order to enlist our attention, it is not necessary, 
 in order that we v^d^y feel. . . . The size and shape of our 
 bodies, as perceived by vision and touch, are not included 
 in the vital feeling of which we speak " {New Essay, vol. ii, 
 §§ 710-712). 
 
 Herbert Spencer, from an entirely different point of 
 view, acknowledges the existence of the fundamental 
 feeling. He says, " It will be manifest that, besides the 
 few distinct waves of nervous change working their distinct 
 effects, there are multitudinous indistinct waves, secondary 
 and tertiary, travelling in all directions, working their dis- 
 tinct effects. Since such reflected and re-reflected disturb- 
 ances everywhere act as stimuli, we must regard the entire 
 nervous system as at all times discharging itself" {Principles 
 of Psychology, vol. i. pt. i. cap. 4, §§ 38, 39), What is this 
 general and continual discharge but the obverse of the 
 fundamental feeling } The assumption of this feeling 
 enables as to solve the much-vexed question whether the 
 human mind is always conscious. It is not always con- 
 scious, but it has always a fundamental feeling, through a 
 disturbance in which attention may be roused and, thereby, 
 consciousness awakened {cL Psychology, vo\. ii. § 1367, n. ; 
 and New Essay, vol. ii, § 537). 
 
 As to the manner in which we become conscious of mea- 
 sured space, Rosmini forestalled by many years the doctrines 
 of Bain, Spencer, and those \\\\o hold that it is acquired 
 throurrh the senses and the conscious movement of the
 
 290 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L S YS TEM. 
 
 muscular system {New Essay, vol. ii. §§ 838, 839 ; cf. 
 Spencer, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. pt. vi. cap. xiv.). 
 
 According to Rosmini, then, "we form the idea of 
 extension and space in two ways : first, through the funda- 
 mental feeling, accompanied by the faculty of spontaneous 
 motion which our bodies have ; second, through the sensa- 
 tion of touch aided by said faculty. Indefinite space, in 
 the former way, is produced by a movement in all the 
 directions of a solid space felt by us, that is, of the space 
 of our own bodies. This movement v/e conceive as in- 
 definitely possible. Indefinite space, in the second way, 
 is produced by the possible movement of a felt superficies 
 in all directions besides that of its own plane " {New 
 Essay, § 839). According to this theory, space is at once 
 subjective and extra-subjective. As subjective, it is known 
 through the fundamental feeling ; as extra-subjective, 
 through touch and motion. In this way are reconciled 
 the doctrine of Kant, who regarded space as merely sub- 
 jective, and that of those psychologists who hold that it 
 is an acquired perception, derived from the terms, or as 
 they incorrectly say, the objects, of sense. 
 
 In regard to the mode in which external bodies are 
 perceived, see under § 80. 
 
 The soul 
 exercises 
 no action 
 on its first 
 term ; but 
 towards its 
 second it 
 is both 
 passive 
 and active. 
 
 133- 
 
 In connection with its first term, that is, with 
 unmeasured space, the sensitive principle exer- 
 cises no activity. It merely has it for its term, 
 without being able to cause any modification in 
 it. In connection with its second term — that is, 
 its own body — on the contrary, it is not only 
 receptive or passive, but also active ; and this 
 passivity and activity, which are reciprocal and 
 manifold, are governed by the most wonderful 
 laws.
 
 SENSITIVITY AND INSTINCT. 291 
 
 134- 
 
 The sensitive principle or soul, in so far as it Sensitivity 
 is passive, is said to be endowed with the faculty stinct. 
 of feeling or with sensitivity; in so far as it is 
 active, it is said to be endowed with instinct. 
 
 135. 
 
 The first act of instinct is that which pro- instinct, 
 duces feeling, and is called vital instinct. But and vital. 
 every feeling roused in the soul produces in it a medclne. 
 new activity, and this second activity which suc- 
 ceeds the feelings is called sensual instinct. With 
 these three principles — -first, the vital instinct; 
 second, the sensitivity ; and, third, the sensual in- 
 stinct — we explain in a wonderful way the physio- 
 logical, pathological, and therapeutical phenomena 
 of the animal, and here the science of medicine 
 finds its place. 
 
 "The spirit, devoid of ideas and furnished with only 
 sensations, may, by itself, in virtue of instinct, attach itself 
 to one or another sensation, in order the better to enjoy the 
 pleasure of it. This is not, properly speaking, reflection, 
 but a reinforcement of attention, and an attention not of 
 the understanding, but of the sense. Indeed, instead of 
 attention, we might more correctly call it an cipplication of 
 the instinctive force of the animal, naturally called forth 
 and held by the pleasant sensation to itself" {Neiv Essay, 
 vol. ii. § 449). 
 
 It appears, from § 135, that the sensitive principle has 
 one passivity, viz., sensitivity, and two activities or in- 
 stincts, the vital and the sensual, or, as we might perhaps
 
 292 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 better term it, the orectic. Enough has already been said 
 about the sensitivity. It remains to consider the two 
 activities of the sensitive principle. Of these the first is 
 the vital instinct, or that instinct which co-operates with 
 the sensible in the production of feeling ; the second is 
 that which operates in accordance with feeling already 
 produced. " These are the two original and universal 
 forces, from which proceed all the special active faculties 
 and all the operations of the animal" {Anthropology, § 369). 
 As to the vital instinct, its point of departure is " that 
 act in which the sentient principle co-operates in the pro- 
 duction of the fundamental feeling" {Ibid., § 371). This 
 act is the production of life, which Rosmini defines as 
 " the incessant production of all those extra-subjective 
 phenomena which precede, accompany, and follow parallel 
 with the corporeal and material feeling" {Ibid., § 267). 
 It is curious to compare this definition, which was written 
 before 1846, with those more recent ones advanced by the 
 most eminent biologists. The older one of Bichat, " La vie 
 est I'ensemble des fonctions qui resistent a la mort," hardly 
 deserves attention, as it is no definition at all, signifying 
 merely. Life is resistance to death. As well might one define 
 being as resistance to nought. Herbert Spencer {Principles 
 of Biology, vol. i. ch. iv.) defines life "as the continuous 
 adjustment of internal relations to external relations." 
 Bastian {The Beginnings of Life, vol. i. p. 71) enlarges this 
 definition into " Life is the definite combination of hetero- 
 geneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in 
 correspondence with external co-existences and sequences." 
 It will be seen at a glance that, between these definitions 
 and that given by Rosmini, there is only this difference, 
 that the last is by far the most philosophical and best 
 expressed. But to return to the vital instinct. According 
 to Rosmini, it exists prior to the body, and is, indeed, the 
 force through which the body is built up. " The co-opera- 
 tion of the soul in the production of animal feeling consists 
 in an act anterior to that of the body, which act has the 
 double effect of rendering the body active and itself passive 
 to it. . . . The body cannot excite the feeling of the soul.
 
 SENSUAL INSTINCT. 293 
 
 unless the soul itself, operating on the organized body, 
 renders it capable of operating upon the soul itself, in that 
 manner which is necessary in order to give birth to the 
 feeling of excitation, which is the proper feeling of the 
 animal. Thus action produces passion, and passion pro- 
 duces action — an incessant action and reaction, observable 
 not in this case only, but in all nature. . . . Prior to 
 the feeling of excitation, which requires some stimulus to 
 move the sensitive body, whose corporeal soul it afterwards 
 is, I hold that there is a feeling of the continuous, and the 
 principle of this feeling, being stimulated, becomes capable 
 of animating, when excited, the body organized and 
 properly disposed " {Anthropology, §§ 382, 383). 
 
 In regard to the sensual instinct, Rosmini says, " The 
 term of the fundamental feeling is modified, not only by 
 the soul, but also by material forces. Hence the modifica- 
 tions of the fundamental feeling are the various acquired 
 sensations. Experience shows that, given feeling and the 
 special sensations, there is manifested a new activity of the 
 soul, that which we call sensual instinct. In fact, what 
 teaches the child to seek the light with its eyes but this 
 instinct .'' Who teaches it to seek nourishment . . . from 
 the breast of its mother or nurse .'' Who directs all its 
 movements and the few actions of its infantile life } It is 
 always this instinct which attracts it to agreeable feelings 
 and withholds it from disagreeable ones. . . . Now, it is 
 easy to see that this second activity of the soul is a kind 
 of continuation of the first. Sensual instinct is a continua- 
 tion of vital instinct. The vital instinct posits the first, the 
 fundamental, feeling ; the sensual instinct seeks other feel- 
 ings. It is always to feeling that the activity of the soul 
 tends. . . . Thus the primordial virtue of the soul is reduced 
 to a unity. All its acts are virtually contained in that act 
 whereby it first feels. Through this act it becomes, so to 
 speak, a bent bow. Its virtue is ready. All that is required 
 is the removal of impediments. Then it discharges itself, 
 manifesting movements in its effect. Hence the soul might 
 very properly be defined as "an individual being that, 
 feeling, acts " {Anthrop., §§ 385, 388). According to Rosmini,
 
 294 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
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 FEELING OF CONTINUITY. 295 
 
 the medicative forces of nature are due to the vital instinct, 
 and the perturbing forces to the sensual or orectic {Anthrop., 
 §§ 401, 414). The table on the preceding page will show 
 the various functions of the vital and sensual instincts. 
 
 136. 
 
 The union of the animal principle with its Principle 
 corporeal term is so close that the one is incon- in \h&^ 
 ceivable without the other, and therefore, although form a 
 the one is not the other, but, on the contrary, is 5e"|g^. 
 opposed to the other, the two form one being, one 
 animated whole, and when we make the term a 
 being apart or entirely separate, it is nothing 
 more than a mere product of abstraction. 
 
 Nevertheless, in the term of the animal, we Three 
 
 1 . . ... , . 1 • 1 • kinds of 
 
 must distmguish three thmgs, which give occa- feeling in 
 sion to three kinds of feeling : first, the corporeal ^o^^^J"^^ 
 continuous — the term of the feeling of the cor- toAree^ 
 poreally extended ; second, the internal movement of"he"sen- 
 of atoms or molecules, or of parts of the cor- ^^^^"^ ^^^'^' 
 poreally extended — term of the feeling of excita- 
 tion ; and, third, the harmonious continzmtion of 
 said movement — term of the organic feeling. 
 
 In regard to the Feeling of Continuity, Rosmini says, 
 " If we imagine a single element of matter, extended and 
 perfectly hard, as we suppose the first elements to be, then, 
 even although such an element were to fall under our senses 
 (which it certainly never could on account of its smallness), 
 it would give no sign of life, because it would be unable to
 
 296 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 give to itself, or to receive within it, any movement. At 
 the same time, its sentient principle would be simple ; the 
 term of this principle would be the minute space deter- 
 mined by the element. In this felt term there would be 
 homogeneity and uniformity, supposing the matter of the 
 element in question to be equally dense in all its parts ; 
 there would be difference of intensity, supposing the density 
 variable in the different strata or points of the element. 
 In this little life would be found, in its perfection, the 
 characteristic of contimnty" {Psychology, vol. i. § 535). 
 
 In a note on the above passage, the author says, " This 
 difference of density in a perfectly hard continuous is 
 barely conceivable. ... If, making another hypothesis, we 
 suppose that in every primitive element there is a kind of 
 centre corresponding to Boscovich's simple points, from 
 which emanates attraction or retention, and that this mani- 
 fests its effect in a given ratio — for example, in the inverse 
 ratio of the squares of the distances — it is true that the 
 element would be more hard and more dense in propor- 
 tion as the matter composing it was nearer to the centre ; 
 nevertheless, it will remain true that, if these elements are 
 supposed of a given minimum size, they will in every part 
 be so dense and so hard as to be indivisible by any ex- 
 ternal force, and, therefore, real atoms (physically indivisible). 
 It is easy to understand the necessity of this effect when 
 we consider that, at the smallest distances, attraction 
 increases with a progression that surpasses all imagination, 
 and in comparison with which mechanical forces are almost 
 infinitesimal, while forces can be externally applied to the 
 atom only to the most limited extent, on account of its 
 smallness and lightness. In like manner, the physical and 
 chemical forces are almost nothing, that is, if we suppose 
 them all to operate (as we believe they do) according to the 
 same laws that govern universal attraction, or to present the 
 appearance of so operating. Inasmuch as these forces have 
 to be applied to the atoms from without, the body applied 
 to the atom is more distant from the centre of attraction of 
 the atom than the matter forming the atom, and hence this 
 body must exert a less force uj^on that matter than the
 
 A TOMS. 297 
 
 centre of the atom, supposed to be the centre of attraction. 
 Moreover, if we suppose attraction to act at a distance (a 
 notion irreconcilable with our mode of perception) it can 
 exercise on the atom only that very small force sufficient 
 to attract it ; so that, although the whole atom, being as 
 light as it is small, may be attracted by such forces, it can 
 never be rent asunder by them. 
 
 "Through the condensation or attracting centre, sup- 
 posed to exist in the atom, it seems possible to explain 
 why atoms which are in contact with each other (a possible 
 supposition) do not unite so as to become perfectly hard, 
 but may still be sundered. Indeed, if there were not in 
 the interior of the atom various degrees of condensation of 
 matter, it would not be easy, without denying the contact 
 of atoms, as some have done, or having recourse to a 
 repulsive force, which would seem as if it must be derivative, 
 to explain how atoms, although in contact, still remain 
 distinct and separable. If, on the contrary, we suppose 
 condensation of matter to increase towards the centre of 
 the atom, we readily understand how the internal matter 
 can be no further rarefied, and this for the simple reason 
 that near the surface, at which the atoms touch each other, 
 the matter, though continuous and impenetrable, is most 
 rare, and, therefore, cannot condense itself there, being 
 always held with greater force by the dense matter nearest 
 to the centres of the two atoms that are in contact. It 
 remains for the mathematician to submit these postulates 
 to calculation, and to discover how small the primitive 
 elements must be in order that they may be perfectly hard, 
 that is, indivisible and distinct from each other, even admit- 
 ting them to be in real contact." Difference of density in 
 a continuous seems unthinkable ; but difference of intensity 
 of attraction will answer even better the ends of Rosmini's 
 argument. 
 
 In regard to the Feeling of Excitation, Rosmini says, " If 
 to the simple animate element [the atom] we add other 
 elements likewise animate, we may readily conceive new 
 phenomena. Let us suppose these elements to be of 
 diverse forms. United together by their own attraction or
 
 298 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 retention, they will form various polyhedrons, according to 
 the forms of the elements which unite. If we suppose 
 the forms of the elements regular, there will result 
 regular polyhedrons. But these regular polyhedrons will 
 differ from each other, not only in form, but also in density, 
 and hence in specific gravity. TJie reason of this will be 
 clear, if we consider that on the variety of form among the 
 primitive combining elements these two accidents depend : 
 (i) Whether the surfaces in contact shall be greater or 
 
 smaller, and, hence, whether the union of these elements 
 
 shall be more or less firm. 
 (2) Whether there shall remain in the interior of the crystals 
 
 larger or smaller intervals, on which, of course, would 
 
 depend the greater or less specific gravity of these 
 
 primitive crystals. 
 " Let the combining elements be only two. The bination 
 even of the primitive elements must give us molecules 
 having properties different from those of the primitive 
 elements ; still more, of course, the ternation, quaternation, 
 etc, of these elements. If we suppose that these first 
 elements, even when they are in contact, do not unite with 
 sufficient force to render the matter between the elements 
 perfectly hard, we shall at once have new accidents. In 
 these molecules the continuous term of feeling, to which 
 corresponds a single sentient principle, is more extended 
 than in that of the primitive elements. It is true that, if the 
 particle were composed of only two or three elements, 
 perpetual motion from within it could never begin, and 
 hence vital movements would never take place. But, if 
 the two or three elements, without separating, are moved by 
 an external impulse, in such a way that their adhering faces 
 slightly rub, then the uniform feeling diffused through said 
 elements must necessarily receive an excitation, and, hence, 
 it is not absurd to suppose that there arises in it a sensation, 
 although this is evidenced by no extra-subjective manifesta- 
 tion. Moreover, if we suppose that the two elements, 
 through the violence exerted on them, no longer have their 
 centres of gravity in the greatest possible proximity, it is 
 not absurd to imagine that they are impelled to restore the
 
 FEELING OF ORGANIZATION. 299 
 
 primitive equilibrium of forces, by the activity of the feehng 
 with which they are invested. The feeling diffused through 
 the two elements is one, by reason of their continuity, and 
 as it resists separation, so it tends to unite itself, and, hence, 
 to hold the elements united and inosculated in the greatest 
 possible number of points, through that moment of the 
 organizing functions which we call retention, and of which 
 we shall speak afterwards. Here then, besides the charac- 
 teristic of contimdty, we should have that of excitation ; but 
 this would be momentary and accidental, having no system 
 of stimuli succeeding each other, and keeping in continuous, 
 regular and harmonious motion the elements composing the 
 little group supposed." {Psychology, vol. i. §§ 5 36-540). 
 
 The Feeling of Orga7iization Rosmini reaches in the 
 following way : — " In the life of two or three, or, at least, 
 of a few elements united in a single molecule, we have, 
 (i) continuity, (2) possibility of excitation, which are two 
 characteristics of life. But, as the excitation in such a 
 case would depend upon the external force causing the 
 elements, without separating, to slide upon and rub against 
 each other, it would be momentary and would excite only 
 a transient sensation, which the spontaneous activity of the 
 sensitive principle would not be able to continue. It is 
 impossible, therefore, to obtain the external phenomena of 
 animal life, unless the living elements unite in a considerable 
 number, a number sufficient to compose a machine more or 
 less complicated — a machine so cunning in its structure 
 that, through the reciprocal actions of organs, there are 
 produced the stimuli which shall perpetuate the motion 
 and, hence, the excitation of the feeling, so that the feeling, 
 harmonically excited, shall both preserve the continuity of 
 the parts and the unity of the organism, and that this, in its 
 turn, shall excite the feeling and maintain it by its own 
 proper excitation. It is plain, from these considerations, 
 that organisatioji, which itself is produced by feeling, gives 
 occasion to the variety of natural beings and the diverse 
 kinds of phenomena which present themselves to man. 
 Hence — 
 
 ^' First, Compounds made up of few elements cannot
 
 300 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 manifest any forces other than mechanical, physical, and 
 chemical, and it does not seem unlikely that the true 
 cause of these is the feeling inherent in the first elements, 
 not having power to manifest itself otherwise for want of 
 the proper organization. 
 
 " Second, in compounds made up of a larger number of 
 elements, we ought to begin to observe a certain regularity 
 of organization, such as we find in the minerals, and the 
 similar aggregation which is remarked chiefly in the metals. 
 
 " Third, if the composition is more complicated, it ought 
 to produce the organization of the vegetables, which are 
 altogether destitute of organs similar to those with which 
 man expresses pleasure, pain, his instincts, etc. But in this 
 organization there is a system of self-reproducing stimuli. 
 All that is wanting is the external signs of feeling felt and 
 signified by man. We cannot, therefore, know what degree 
 of unity, accentration and excitation there is in the feeling 
 which may exist in vegetables. 
 
 " Fourth, with a more cunning organization we find mani- 
 fested, besides these characteristics, the phenomenon of 
 irritability or contradistention, which, though not capable 
 of manifesting with certainty the existence of feeling, 
 approaches feeling, through the similarity which the move- 
 ments of such irritable or contradistensive bodies have to 
 the spontaneous movements arising from feeling, and in 
 their texture, which resembles that of felt organs. 
 
 ^^ Fifth and finally, with an organization still more com- 
 plicated and perfect than the preceding, there are mani- 
 fested the extra-subjective phenomena, commonly called 
 animal, which are properly those that certify to the pre- 
 sence of feeling, of the continuance of the term of feeling, 
 of the unity of action in the feeling itself — a unity capable 
 of dominating all movements, which, though not deriving 
 their principle from it, owe to it their continuance and 
 direction. These movements, again, produce the stimuli 
 which re-excite the feeling, when its excitation flags, and 
 restore it to its previous state " {Psychology, vol. i. §§ 541, 
 542).
 
 ANIMATE AND ANIMAL. 301 
 
 138. 
 
 Now, the sensitive principle may be destitute Difference 
 of the last two kinds of feeling, but not of the first, animate 
 If it has only the first and second kinds of feeling, ^mai. 
 it may be said to be animate, but not animal. 
 The distinctive characteristic of the animal is the 
 organic feeling, which requires a suitable organi- 
 zation. We may, therefore, say that the animal, 
 but not that the animate, dies. 
 
 Rosmini defines the animate as " an immediate extended 
 term of a sentient principle." The animal he defines as 
 " an individual being, endowed with material sense and 
 instinct, with an organization and organico-excitatory 
 movements" {Anthropology, § 45). Distinguishing between 
 elementary and organic souls, he holds that the former 
 cannot be destroyed by any natural force. His grounds for 
 this opinion are two •.first, that, since matter is inconceivable 
 save as the term of a sentient principle or elementary soul, 
 if the elementary souls were annulled, all matter would be 
 annulled at the same time ; second, that, the union between 
 the sensitive principle and its term being immediate, no- 
 thing can either come between them, or act upon either of 
 them, so as to withdraw the one from the other. " When 
 the organic souls are redissolved into the elementary 
 ones through the dissolution of the organized bodies, the 
 existence of the souls does not cease, but is merely trans- 
 formed " {Psychology, vol. i. §§ 66},, 664). From this it will 
 be seen that, according to Rosmini, the unit of natural 
 existence is neither force nor matter, but sentience, and 
 that through this all the material and dynamic phenomena 
 of nature may be explained.
 
 302 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Laws of 
 
 essential 
 changes 
 which the 
 animate 
 undergoes 
 in respect 
 of its indi- 
 viduality. 
 
 139- 
 
 Nevertheless, the latter undergoes essential 
 changes in respect to its individuality. These 
 changes may be summed up in the following 
 laws : — 
 
 (i) Every continuous extended has a single 
 sensitive principle of continuity. This law leads 
 us to the conclusion that, when several atoms come 
 in contact, so as to form a continuous whole, 
 their sensitive principles unite and become one. 
 This new principle contains all the activity of the 
 previous ones, not cancelled but concentrated ; so 
 that, when the one continuous is broken up into 
 several, the principle multiplies itself into several 
 sensitive principles. Here there is no divisioji or 
 composition, but only iniiltiplication and tt7iification. 
 
 (2) If the internal movement in a given con- 
 tinuous is partial, the principle of the continuous 
 remains one, but the principles of feeling excited 
 become as numerous as the systems of continuous 
 movements. 
 
 (3) If the internal harmonic movement in the 
 parts of a contimious embrace the whole con- 
 tinuous, this single harmony has a single sentient 
 principle ; but, if the systems of harmonious move- 
 ments in the same continuous are several, then 
 there are several sentient principles, that is, as 
 many as there are different systems, although, of 
 course, they all have for their basis or first act 
 the principle which embraces the whole of the 
 continuous.
 
 MULTIPLICATION OF SENTIENT PRINCIPLES. 303 
 
 In regard to the multiplication of the sensitive prin- 
 ciple, Rosmini says, " This multiplication of the sentient 
 principle is difficult to understand, because our fancy 
 readily imagines this principle to be a complete and sub- 
 sistent being without the felt, a kind of minute corpuscle. 
 But it is not so. We must destroy in our minds this 
 fantastic being and concentrate our attention upon the 
 nature of the thing. We must consider that in nature 
 there exists only the felt, that with the felt, as such, there is 
 necessarily united the sentient, and that this feels only the 
 felt continuous, without feeling itself ; for the reason that 
 the animal sensnm has no power of self-reflection, since, 
 indeed, the monosyllable j^^ is altogether inapplicable to it. 
 If, therefore, this principle feels only the felt, and if it is 
 sentient only in so far as it feels, it is surely clear that, if 
 the felt be divided into two contiima, the sentient will feel 
 two contiima, but, not feeling itself, it will not be able to 
 maintain its identity in the two sensa, because they are 
 divided. And this is what is meant by multiplication. 
 We must, therefore, conclude that every sensitive soul is 
 simple and indivisible, but that, nevertheless, it is multi- 
 plicable" {Psychology, vol. i. §§ 460, 461). "If the material 
 of feeling divides itself without destroying itself, so that 
 out of a single continuous there are formed two indepen- 
 dent continua furnished with the conditions necessary to 
 preserve continuity and organism, then also the sensitive 
 principle becomes two. In other words, the animal mul- 
 tiplies itself through the multiplication of animate material. 
 This ... is what explains generation and furnishes the 
 general formula under which are comprehended all the 
 different modes of multiplication that are met with in 
 the animal kingdom" {Anthropology, §§ 340,341). "The 
 perfection of an animal depends upon the variety, unity, 
 and intensity of its feeling. . . . Hence the perfect 
 animals have only one sensitiv^c centre, and their multipli- 
 cation can take place only through the formation in them 
 of a new centre independent of the first " {Ibid., § 342 ; cf. 
 Theosophy, vol. v. § 331).
 
 304 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 The 
 human 
 soul, in so 
 far as it is 
 intellec- 
 tive, is 
 united to 
 its own 
 body by 
 an origi- 
 nal, in- 
 born per- 
 ception 
 of it. 
 
 140. 
 
 But the human soul Is not sensitive only ; It Is 
 also intellective. It Is a principle at once intel- 
 lective and sensitive. In so far as it is sensitive, 
 It has for its term Its own body ; but, Inasmuch as 
 the intellective principle is made one with the sen- 
 sitive, so that the two are but one principle with 
 two activities, the intellective and sensitive soul, 
 or, In one word, the rational soul, has body for Its 
 term. In so far as it is sensitive, it has a felt 
 term ; in so far as Intellective, an ruiderstood term. 
 The body, therefore, is a felt-understood term of 
 the human soul. There is, therefore, in the soul 
 an intellective perception of its own body, pri- 
 mordial and Immanent, and In this perception lies 
 the nexus between the human soul and body. 
 
 " The body is In the soul, and the soul In the body. 
 . . . Hence there is no difficulty in explaining their mutual 
 action" {Theosophy, vol. v. p. 226, § 2). ''Our extra-sub- 
 jective-;rrt/ body is known to us only as a force that 
 modifies the soul by giving it extended sensations (as a 
 sensiferous principle), and that modifies also the other 
 similar forces, calculated to modify the soul. The extra- 
 subjective-iv//^^zr or anatomical body is the same force, 
 not considered in its immediate action on the soul, but in 
 its mediate action, and, besides, as invested with the so- 
 called secondary qualities, colour, smell, etc. In so far, 
 indeed, as the body acts immediately on the soul, it cannot 
 be the object of anatomy or of the external senses, but is 
 known only immediately by the feeling which it produces " 
 {Anthropology, § 201). Rosmini devotes the third book of 
 his Psychology (pp. 136-2 10) to a consideration of the 
 union and reciprocal influence of soul and body.
 
 CONNECTION BETWEEN SOUL AND BODY. 305 
 
 141. 
 
 The reciprocal influence of soul and body is Hence 
 
 there IS 3. 
 
 thus explained. Every reality of the nature of a physical 
 
 . , . , . 1 1 r influence 
 
 principle is, by nature, active, and, tnereiore, acts between 
 according to certain laws in its term. But since body. 
 it cannot act in that term unless it has it as a term, 
 and it cannot have it unless it is given to it, the 
 principle must be receptive and passive, as well 
 as active, with respect to its term and to that virtue 
 which supplies, and that virtue which modifies for 
 it, that term. It is, therefore, plain that between 
 the human mind and its body there is communica- 
 tion or physical influence. 
 
 " In regard to this constant perception of the funda- 
 mental animal feeling, there must be no deception. Let us 
 enumerate its characteristics. 
 
 "(i) By means of this perception, the soul does not 
 perceive the extra-subjective and anatomical body, but 
 perceives all the fundamental animal feeling, as it is, 
 indivisible, continuous, harmonic, etc. 
 
 " (2) Hence, it does not perceive the principle alone 
 without its term, because, without its term, the principle 
 does not exist. 
 
 "(3) In the same way, it does not perceive the sub- 
 jective body, which is the term of the feeling separated 
 from its principle, because the mental separation of the 
 term of the animal feeling from its principle is not made 
 until a late stage of development, and only by means of 
 reflection, which analyzes feeling ; but there does not exist 
 in itself a felt body separate from the sentient principle. 
 Hence, this primitive natural perception is not sufficient by 
 itself to give us the pure notion of subjective body, because 
 in it this body is not isolated from its principle. 
 
 X
 
 3o6 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 "(4) Much less does it perceive the parts of the body- 
 separated from the whole ; it perceives the whole in its 
 perfect simplicity and harmonic unity. 
 
 " (5) It perceives nothing extra-subjective, such as 
 forms, sizes, limits. 
 
 " (6) Of the perception, such as it is at first, we have con- 
 sciousness, because consciousness springs from reflection 
 upon what goes on within us, and this perception is 
 anterior to all reflection " {Psychology, vol. i. § 267). 
 
 How the 
 intellec- 
 tive and 
 sensitive 
 principles 
 are one. 
 
 142, 
 
 How the intellective and sensitive principles 
 can be one it will be impossible to conceive, so 
 long as we set out by gratuitously assuming that 
 they are originally distinct, and then, going on to 
 suppose that the sensitive principle, indivisible 
 from its term, is given to the intellective principle 
 to perceive, finally ask. What will then happen ? 
 We must reply that the intellective principle will 
 never be able to perceive the sensitive, except by 
 uniting itself intimately with it, that is, perceiving 
 all it feels, since the very nature of the sensitive 
 principle is wholly due to what it feels. Thus 
 the two principles become one, without destroying 
 each other's activity. Two principles, indeed, 
 cannot be terms of each other, unless the one, that 
 is, the perceiving term, acquire the activity of the 
 perceived ; for perception is a physical nexus, and 
 one activity cannot have a physical 7iexus with 
 another that is a principle, without uniting to itself 
 that activity and that principle. Indeed, a term is 
 separated from its principle solely by difference of 
 nature, that is, because the term is extended and
 
 WHAT IS DEATH? 307 
 
 the principle simple — because the term is object 
 and the principle subject ; but, if the nature of the 
 two is the same, and both are subjective principles, 
 the only conceivable way in which physical union 
 could take place between them would be that the 
 percipient principle should receive and appropriate 
 the activity of the sentient principle perceived by 
 it. It does not follow from this that the two 
 activities are confounded in a third, but only that, 
 though remaining distinct, they acquire a single 
 principle, which is their common starting-point. 
 And yet this common starting-point does not 
 prevent the one from being subordinate to the 
 other. 
 
 143- 
 If the sensitive activity be separated from the what is 
 intellective percipient principle, as happens when 
 its term, the body, is disorganized and leaves its 
 sensitive principle without the organized term 
 which is proper to it, it vanishes, and the in- 
 dividual dies. 
 
 In answer to the old and momentous question, What 
 is death ? Rosmini replies thus : " Common sense replies 
 that death consists in the separation of the soul from 
 the body, and the reply is most just ; but in what does 
 this separation consist ? Having seen wherein the union 
 of the soul with the body consists, we are able likewise 
 to understand their disunion. Knowing the knot which 
 forms human life, we know how it is untied and how life 
 ceases. The knot of the intellective soul with the body 
 was shown by us to consist in a natural and immanent
 
 3o8 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSPEM. 
 
 intellective perception of the fundamental feeling, and, 
 hence, of the body. When this primitive perception of the 
 fundamental feeling ceases, the human soul is loosed from 
 the body, the human body is dead, the human being is 
 dissolved " * {Psychology, vol. i. § 670). Of course, the 
 dissolution of the body, that is, of the sensible term of the 
 soul, does not involve the dissolution of the soul itself. 
 Besides the body, the sentient soul has another and higher 
 term, viz., universal being, which, from its very nature, 
 cannot separate itself from anything to which it has once 
 been attached as form. Hence the sentient subject, which 
 has once had the intuition of being, once risen to intelli- 
 gence, can never lose it. " By this progress, the sentient 
 principle acquired a new term to its activity, a term 
 superior to, and independent of, the body, a term which 
 essentially is, which is ideality itself But the nature of any 
 active principle is determined by the nature of its term. 
 Hence the sensitive principle, by acquiring this new term, 
 changed its nature and put on one infinitely more noble, 
 attained a perfect and divine form. ... It is an ontological 
 law that every being, through that virtue whereby it is, 
 tends to preserve and perfect itself, and, therefore, no being 
 has any virtue directed to its self-destruction. ... If, 
 therefore, no being, no nature, destroys itself, all destruction 
 of beings comes from without, from some foreign activity. 
 Again, every complete being is a simple principle, having 
 a natural and immanent term. If the principle has its 
 term, it is ; if its term is taken from it, it ceases, because 
 the natural and immanent term is the condition of the first 
 act, whereby, according to the known law, the principle is. 
 This principle, deprived of all its terms, remains a mere 
 abstraction, a mere capacity, a being similar to the first 
 matter [Tr/owrr) v\r]\ of the ancients, which was supposed to 
 be void of all form. . . . The destruction of a contingent 
 being, therefore, takes place only through the destruction 
 of the term in which its first act terminates. Now, what 
 
 * Porphyry says, " "Vvxh /caTa56?Tai nphs rh ffco/xa rfj iTrLcnpo<pfj rfj irphs 
 Ta irddy] to, air' aliTov- Koi Anerai 5e iraXiv 5ia ttJj air' aiiTOV anaOeias" 
 {Sentent., vii.).
 
 IMMOR TA LITY. 309 
 
 is the term of the being man ? We have seen that he has 
 two terms, the body and universal being. . . . The body 
 of man, the one of these terms, is a complex of elements, 
 organized in the most perfect specific manner, and thus 
 individuated. Now, the forces of nature may dissolve this 
 organization, and thereby destroy the animal feeling that is 
 proper to man. But on universal being all the forces of 
 nature exert themselves in vain, since it is impassible, im- 
 mutable, eternal, and not subject to the activity of any 
 (limited) being. Hence, that virtue whereby man intuites 
 universal being cannot perish. But this virtue, this first 
 act, is the intellective soul, which, therefore, cannot cease to 
 exist in its own proper individuality. . . . The intellective 
 soul of man, therefore, originally sprang from the womb 
 of the sensitive soul and was a virtue of it ; but this virtue 
 became the principal act and acquired immortality, as soon 
 as it rose to universal being, because this is altogether 
 imperishable, unmodifiable, and eternal " {Psychology, vol. i. 
 §§ 6^6-6Zo), 
 
 144- 
 Psychology, after thus treating of the essence Second 
 
 - . 111 • • r °^c^ °f 
 
 of the soul and the constitution 01 man, passes Psycho- 
 on to speak of the career and development of deduce 
 this essence itself, which distributes its activity classify the 
 
 .1 • 1 , • 1 • 1 faculties of 
 
 among the various powers and operations which the soul, 
 it displays. Coming to this subject, it proceeds 
 to perform two operations, the one analytic and 
 the other synthetic. In the former, it deduces 
 the faculties of the soul from its essence, and dis- 
 tinguishes them, first from that essence, and then 
 from each other, following them carefully into all 
 their ramifications, which, like the branches of a 
 tree, become more numerous the further they are 
 from the stem ; after which, it enumerates and
 
 3IO PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 defines them systematically. In the latter, it 
 codifies the laws or constant modes of operation 
 of said faculties. 
 
 " We have seen that all the powers of the animal, all its 
 activities, proceed from a first act of the sentient principle, 
 in which that principle co-operates in producing the fiinda- 
 mental feeling. If, now, we apply a similar reflection to 
 the intelligent principle, we shall find that all its powers, 
 all the activities of man, in so far as he is a being endowed 
 with intelligence, have their source in that first act, wherein 
 the human spirit intuites being, and thus, along with and 
 through being, co-operates in positing his own intelligence. 
 
 " Indeed, in regard to the order of mental operations, 
 an accurate analysis of our thoughts brings us to this 
 result, that any thought or mental operation, whereby we 
 acquire a new cognition, is always reducible to the deter- 
 mination and limitation of a cognition previously possessed, 
 to a learning explicitly of what was before known im- 
 plicitly ; so that an implicit cognition, from which all other 
 cognitions evolve themselves as from a germ, necessarily 
 precedes these. All other cognitions are but a limitation of 
 this first one, a continuation, a greater actuation, of it. The 
 spirit, by the same activity whereby it intuites universal 
 being, likewise intuites every particular being, because 
 everything is already contained in universal being. 
 Nothing further is required than that this being should show 
 itself more and more to him who looks at it. Thus, he 
 who goes to the theatre sees with the same act with which 
 he looks at the stage all that appears on the stage. The 
 scene on which everything appears to our spirit is universal 
 being, into which we naturally and immovably gaze. Our 
 eye, therefore, is always in tension, always strained to see 
 what appears on the scene ; it cannot close, it cannot wink. 
 In this way, by that same act whereby the spirit intuites 
 universal being, is explained every intellective activity of 
 the mind" {Anthropology, §§ 508, 509). 
 
 " The human spirit naturally intuites ideal being.
 
 POTENTIALITY OF INTELLECT. 311 
 
 This is not a potentiality but an act [ti'tpytm], an act essen- 
 tial to the spirit. It is the intellect, in so far as it goes to 
 constitute an element of human nature. But if ideal being, 
 naturally present to the human spirit, acquires a relation 
 with the real world through sensations, then the intellect 
 intuites being furnished with some determination, and 
 toward this new act it is in a state of potentiality. This 
 is what is called the potentiality of the intellect" {Anthro- 
 pology, § 510). Cf St. Thomas: " Intellectus dupliciter 
 considerari potest. Uno modo secundum quod intellectus 
 est apprensivus entis et veri universalis, alio modo secun- 
 dum quod est quaedam res et particularis potentia, habens 
 determinatum actum " {Sum. Tkeol., i. q. 82, art. 4). 
 
 145- 
 
 When we try to deduce the powers of the Questions 
 mind from its essence, we are inevitably met by sent ?hem. 
 such grave ontological questions as these : How wherf we 
 can the unity of essence be reconciled with the duce°the' 
 multiplicity of powers ? How can succession ^f £^011°^ 
 powers consist with permanence or immutability essence^ 
 of essence ? How can the same essence have a 
 variety of accidental states ? etc., etc. 
 
 Rosmini, in his Psychology (vol. ii. §§ 735-740, 854-909) 
 and Theosophy (vol. v. pp. 257-259), devotes considerable 
 space to the consideration of these questions. It will not 
 be difficult to divine the answers, if we remember that 
 difference of act is determined by difference of term, and 
 that the terms of intellective activity are all given. It is 
 entirely indifferent to light what it illuminates.
 
 312 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Three 
 classes of 
 laws to 
 which the 
 soul is 
 subject in 
 its opera- 
 tions : 
 
 ( 1 ) psycho- 
 logical, 
 
 (2) onto- 
 logical, 
 
 (3) cosmo- 
 logical. 
 
 146. 
 
 Wonderful are the laws according to which the 
 soul operates, whether immediately or mediately- 
 through its various powers. And, inasmuch as 
 the soul is one and rational, it follows that all those 
 faculties which we call human, as well as the laws 
 of their operation, must emanate from the rational 
 principle in its relations to its two terms. And 
 thus we obtain three classes of laws — \}ci^ psycho- 
 logical, the ontological, and the cosmological. The 
 psychological laws are those which proceed from 
 the nature of the soul itself as an active principle; 
 the ontological, those that are imposed upon the 
 soul by its higher, intellective term, which is being ; 
 and the cosmological, those that are imposed upon 
 it by its lower term, the sensible world. 
 
 The su- 
 preme on- 
 tological 
 law is the 
 principle 
 of cogni- 
 tion. 
 
 147. 
 
 The supreme ontological law is the principle 
 of cognition, which is thus expressed : — The term 
 of thought is being. It is incredible how fruitful 
 and wonderful this law is in its applications. 
 
 Cosmo- 
 logical 
 laws are 
 either laws 
 of motion 
 or la'd's of 
 hannony. 
 
 148. 
 
 Of the cosmological laws, some preside over 
 the motion which the sensible term imparts to 
 the human soul ; others determine the quality of 
 this motion. The former are called laws of 
 motion ; the latter, laws of harmony.
 
 DESTINY OF THE HUMAN SOUL. 313 
 
 149. 
 
 Finally, the psychological laws, that is, those Two 
 laws which spring from the force of the mind psycho- 
 itself, are divided into two classes, corresponding laws, cor- 
 to the ontological and cosmological laws. ing'iTthe 
 
 ontologi- 
 cal and 
 
 All these laws are considered by Rosmini in various cosmo- 
 chapters of his Psychology. From all it appears that the '^ 
 individual subject stands in a double relation to being. As 
 ideal, being is presented to the subject as object ; as real, it 
 is presented to it as extra-subject. For the individual 
 mind, therefore, the world of being is not divided into inner 
 and outer in such a way that the former is subjective, the 
 latter objective, but thus : — 
 
 ■D • \ Real ^ ^ J \ ■ .• Subject + Object = Ego. 
 
 Being < I Lxtra-subj active 
 
 ( Ideal — Objective | Extra-subjective + Object = N'oti-ego. 
 
 (Subject + Extra-subject) ■\- Object = Ego + A'on-Ego = The Infinite. 
 
 The Infinite, w'hen united to its own proper and necessary 
 principle, the Absolute, is God. 
 
 150. 
 Finally, Psychology attempts to discover the The third 
 
 . and last 
 
 destiny of the human soul. But it cannot accom- aim of 
 plish this discovery by the mere use of natural logy is to 
 
 , ..(.-. discover 
 
 reason or the mere examination 01 human nature, the destiny 
 It may, indeed, by this examination, show whither JJu^an 
 human nature tends ; but it fails to grasp that 
 plus, which the free grace and munificence of the 
 Infinite Being who created it holds in store for it. 
 All, therefore, that we are able to arrive at throuc^h The soul 
 
 ' "^ naturally 
 
 the examination of human nature is this: The fends to 
 
 Its own 
 
 first part of that nature is intelligence, and intelli- perfection,
 
 314 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 which con- 
 sists in the 
 full vision 
 of truth, 
 full exer- 
 cise of vir- 
 tue, and 
 full attain- 
 ment of 
 happiness. 
 
 These 
 three 
 goods are 
 but aspects 
 of one and 
 the same 
 
 gence is made for truth. The second part is will, 
 and will is made for virtue. By his will man 
 adheres to the truth, loves it in all things, and 
 thus loves all things according- to their truth. But 
 this love, which seeks to satisfy itself in beings 
 according to truth, desires complete possession of 
 that which it loves, and which is its good, because 
 it loves it. There is, therefore, a third part in 
 human nature, and this is feeling, in the broadest 
 sense of the term. Feeling is a tendency to 
 enjoy. The will, therefore, which adheres to 
 truth and is thereby virtuous, the will which loves 
 all beings according to truth, desires that all beings 
 should be given it to enjoy, since through enjoy- 
 ment it completes its knowledge and its love of 
 them. This is what is meant by the phrase, 
 " seeking for happiness." 
 
 From this we gather that the soul naturally 
 tends to, and is destined for, perfection. This per- 
 fection consists in the full vision of truth, the full 
 exercise of virtue, and the full attainment of 
 felicity, a threefold end, a threefold destiny, which, 
 nevertheless, forms a perfect unity, since no one 
 of these three elements can exist in a complete 
 form without the other two. The truth is not 
 seen in its inmost recesses except by him who loves 
 and enjoys it ; no one fully loves the truth in the 
 beings wherein it is actualized, unless he sees and 
 enjoys it ; no one has complete enjoyment of it 
 or is happy, if he has not complete love for it and 
 is virtuous, if he has not complete vision of it 
 and is not wise. Each of these three goods implies
 
 HAPPINESS AND PLEASURE. 31 5 
 
 the other two ; they are but three forms of one 
 and the same good. 
 
 " In so far as man is an animal subject endowed with a 
 corporeal sense, he is capable of adapting to himself and of 
 enjoying only particular goods, that is, corporeal ones ; but, 
 in so far as he is an intellectual subject, he perceives all 
 kinds of goods and enjoys all the kinds of good perceived 
 by him. His intellect may even attain the absolute good, 
 and, therefore, this alone can entirely and completely 
 appease it. This is the supreme good of intelligences, in 
 the enjoyment of which consists what is properly called 
 beatitude or happiness — terms which in common parlance 
 are entirely refused both to the blind momentary pleasure 
 of animal life and to all perfection of sensitive things " 
 {Principles of Moral Science, pp. 51, 52). In a note to this 
 passage the author says, " Sensists, of necessity, confound 
 happiness with pleasure, and measure degrees of happiness 
 by pleasure ; but they err. Happiness is certainly enjoy- 
 ment, but not every enjoyment is happiness. Happiness is 
 the enjoyment of the highest good. Now, between the 
 enjoyment of the highest good and that of any other good 
 there is a difference, not of degree, but of kind — an infinite 
 difference, with no middle term to unite one extreme with 
 the other." 
 
 151- 
 But, if human nature, v^hen examined, shows Religious 
 
 tradition 
 
 that this is its destiny, how is this destiny to be alone can 
 
 free man 
 
 reached? Here human reason stands dumb and from the 
 in confusion, seeing that in the present life there which 
 
 1 , . . [. , ^11 arise from 
 
 IS not a smgle condition 01 man that iully corre- the sad 
 sponds to that end to which he aspires. On the orihe pre- 
 one hand, the nature of the human powers, when 2 main's 
 carefully studied, and the incessant cravings of the I'l'it'es must
 
 3i6 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L S YS TEM. 
 
 be treated 
 in a super- 
 natural 
 Psycho- 
 logy and 
 Anthro- 
 pology. 
 
 human heart reveal to reason the supreme aim of 
 humanity ; on the other, reason itself sees hu- 
 manity on this earth for ever weltering in ignor- 
 ance, tossed hither and thither by passions and 
 vices, everywhere corrupt, everywhere unhappy ; 
 life transient as a flash, ever uncertain, ever a 
 struggle, ever a sacrifice, and the death of every 
 man that is born close this great tragedy. At 
 this spectacle reason itself staggers, thinks it is 
 dreaming, loses confidence in itself. At last, 
 rousing itself by one effort, it reinvigorates itself 
 with the consoling hypothesis of a future life. 
 But human reason is not forsaken by God in its 
 dark surmisings. Behold ! God reveals to man 
 the secret of His creative goodness, assures him 
 that the theory inspired by feeling and found 
 by reason, through study and meditation, neither 
 lies nor deceives. It shall be realized, and to it the 
 facts will accurately correspond in a yet higher 
 mode of the same theory. All that upon earth 
 appears as an obstacle to, and contradiction of, 
 reason, finds its explanation in the manifestation 
 of the entire design of the Creator, and even 
 becomes, in this design, a necessary means and a 
 confirmation of what reason itself teaches. The 
 hypothesis of another life is converted into a 
 certainty by an infallible testimony. That other 
 life, which has no end, in which man no more 
 dies, has in it an abundance of weal and of woe 
 that will atone for all the inequalities, and cor- 
 rect all the irregularities, of this temporal life. 
 But in this life itself God has given us a faint
 
 COSMOLOGY. 317 
 
 outline of that future and eternal order, has 
 granted us excellent and purely divine means 
 whereby, if we will, we may rise to that sublime 
 destiny which reason indicates darkly in the far 
 distance. This part, therefore, of the destiny 
 of the soul and of the entire man cannot be 
 treated exhaustively in Natural Psychology or 
 Anthropology, but in another Psychology and 
 Anthropology which draw their doctrines from 
 the mouth of God himself. 
 
 It does not enter into the scope of the present work to 
 consider Rosmini's theological views ; nevertheless, it may 
 not be out of place here to state that, according to him, 
 the Hght of grace alone can make us in any degree 
 acquainted with the nature of God's reality. Human intel- 
 ligence, with its infinite ideal term, is capable of reasoning 
 with certainty to the fact of God's reality or subsistence ; 
 but only a direct presentation of that reality to feeling can 
 in any way make us aware of its nature. Natural things 
 are seen by natural light ; supernatural things by super- 
 natural light. 
 
 2 . Cos7nology. 
 152. 
 
 Cosmology is the science of the world. We what \% 
 have included it among the sciences of percep-iogy? 
 tion, because the objects of perception are the 
 human soul and the bodies of which the world 
 is made up. Of course, in the great system of 
 creation there are other beings which do not fall 
 ■ under sensible experience, and are reached only 
 through inductive reasoning. Such are the pure 
 spirits, the angels.
 
 3i8 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Cosmology might be defined as the science of the 
 extra-subjective, in contradistinction to Psychology, which 
 is the science of the consubjective. The two, along with 
 the inferential sciences of Ontology and Natural Theology, 
 form the subdivisions of Metaphysics. Rosmini left no 
 separate work on Cosmology, but the treatise on the 
 Real, now printed as the fifth volume of the Theosophy, 
 was intended to form part of such a work. According to 
 the original design, the work on Cosmology was to be 
 divided into the following chapters : — (i) The Metaphysical 
 World — Finite Objective Being ; (2) The Conditions of 
 Finite Being — The Finite One ; (3) Finite Triple Being — 
 Creation ; (4) The Universe — The Principle, Being— The 
 Angels ; (5) The First Created Intelligence ; (6) The Soul 
 of the World ; (7) Man ; (8) Time ; (9) Space ; (10) 
 Matter; (11) Numbers; (12) Forms; (13) Laws, Final 
 Grounds — Harmony — Beauty; (14) The End; (15) The 
 Realization of the End. 
 
 This arrangement was subsequently modified somewhat. 
 What was written is divided into two parts, the first of 
 w^hich treats of Essential Matter, the first element of Real 
 Being ; the second, of the Ontological Organism of Real 
 Being. 
 
 153. 
 
 How Cos- Cosmology considers the world (i) as a whole, 
 
 ™nSd^rs (2) in its parts as related to the whole, and (3) 
 
 the world. . • i 
 
 in Its order. 
 
 In other words, the divisions of Cosmology are Philo- 
 sophy of Nature {Nattirphilosophie), Natural Science, and 
 Theology. Under the first will naturally fall the question 
 respecting the origin of the world, whether it was created 
 or existed from all eternity. This question can, of course, 
 be answered only through the discovery of the true nature 
 of the real as presented in the world, and its relation to 
 the ideal, the only form in which we know the eternal. If
 
 PROOFS OF CREATION. 319 
 
 the real presents the same characteristics as the ideal, 
 necessity, universality, eternity, etc., then it must have 
 existed always ; if, on the contrary, it is contingent, par- 
 ticular, temporal, it must have had a beginning. Under 
 the second division will come all the experimental sciences, 
 wherein, through the search for general laws, we try to 
 reduce the phenomena of the world to a unity, and to 
 show that they are due to a single principle. Under the 
 third division will fall the question of the adaptation of 
 means to ends. In whatever sense we use the term end, 
 whether as conscious purpose or as actual result, it will 
 always be true that the order and harmony of a natural 
 organism will have a direct connection with that end, and 
 will necessarily be expressed in terms of it. We cannot 
 explain the construction and order of the eye without 
 taking vision into account. As the Schoolmen said, Act 
 follows being. Rosmini, of course, maintained the doctrine 
 of final cause. 
 
 154- 
 
 Cosmology, as the doctrine of the whole, treats First part 
 (i) of the nature of contingent real being, and °ogy°''"'° 
 
 (2) of its cause. 
 
 155- 
 
 Contingent real being has not within itself the First proof 
 ground of its own existence, and, therefore, re- creation of 
 
 ^ . f the world. 
 
 quires a cause. Since, moreover, no part ot 
 contino-ent beine, whether substantial or acci- 
 dental, contains the ground of its own existence, 
 it requires a creative cause. Contingent being, 
 therefore, is, every moment, drawn out of nothing.
 
 320 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Compare with this Rosmini's definition of life as given 
 under § 124. VVe cannot here quote all that Rosmini 
 advances on the subject of creation ; but the following 
 passage may suffice to show the tenden.y of his doctrine. 
 Speaking of the exemplar of the woild, he says, " This 
 exemplar is the work of the creative liberty of God. 
 Creative liberty is a virtue, a pov/er belonging to absolute 
 being in its subjective form. Absolute being in its sub- 
 jective form infinitely loves itself as understood in its 
 objective form. Being infinitely loves being. This love 
 leads it to love being in all the modes in which it is 
 lovable, in which it can be loved. In order to love it in 
 all its modes, it loves it not only as absolute and infinite 
 being, but also as relative and finite being. This love 
 is the creative act. It, therefore, creates for itself, through 
 the expansion of love, a lovable finite object, and this is 
 the world. In order to create this world, it must, firsts 
 conceive it, both because this creative principle is intelli- 
 gence and because that cannot be loved which is not 
 known ; second, it must realize it, because if it were not 
 real in itself, the object of love would not exist, but would 
 merely be possible, and what is loved, seen in its possi- 
 bility, is desired to exist. Hence the two elements of 
 essence and real, born at one birth, and forming mundane 
 things" {Theosophy, vol. i. § 460). 
 
 156. 
 
 Second A second proof of the creation of the world 
 
 ^'^°°' is drawn from the analysis of perception. This 
 
 analysis shows us that everything that comes 
 under feeling, i.e. ourselves and the world, would 
 necessarily remain unperceived, that is, would not 
 be being, if the mind did not see it united to the 
 essence of being. It is this essence, therefore, 
 that imparts to all things the act of being, lends 
 it to them, as it were, creates them.
 
 PROOFS OF CREATION. 321 
 
 It follows from this that creation does not mean pro- 
 duction from nothing, but from non-being. From absolute 
 nothing, which is the negation not only of being, but of 
 the possibility of being, even Omnipotence itself could not 
 create being. Since being is cognizability, it follows that 
 creation is the act whereby God knows the existent. This 
 creative being, however, is not related to man in the same 
 way as it is related to God. In God, this being is subject 
 as well as object, whereas in man it is merely object. 
 "The object of reason . . . may be communicated to created 
 things, not in the sense that created things may also be 
 that object which belongs to God alone, but in the sense 
 that it may be intuited by them as something different 
 from them. ... It is communicable merely as object, 
 and therefore initial being exists in the human mind in 
 a different way from that in which it exists in the divine 
 mind, from which it is undistinguished. If the absolute 
 object were communicated to the creature, such creature 
 would see the Divine Word [the \6^oq\ which is not 
 possible in the order of nature, but only, through grace, in 
 the supernatural order , . . Man seeing this initial being 
 does not see God, although he sees in it an appurtenance 
 of the divine essence" {TheosopJty, vol. i. § 490). 
 
 157. 
 
 In our consciousness of ourselves, as well as Third 
 of every sensation and perception, we rind a third 
 proof that conting-ent being is created. We feel 
 that we subsist, but we do not feel the force that 
 causes us to subsist. Therefore, we feel that we 
 do not subsist through ourselves. 
 
 158. 
 The nature of contingent being becomes more Thek 
 clear when we explain its essential limitations. thSsen- 
 
 now- 
 
 Y
 
 322 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 tial limita- 
 tions of 
 contingent 
 being com- 
 pletes our 
 knowledge 
 of its na- 
 ture. 
 
 From the study of these proceed most important 
 corollaries, one of which is the doctrine of the 
 possibility of evil. 
 
 The doctrine of limitations is considered by Rosmini in 
 the first volume of the TheosopJiy, §§ 679-728. The follow- 
 ing passage will give, perhaps better than any other, the 
 gist of this doctrine : — " The principle of being is essen- 
 tially simple and one, but it is determined variously 
 according to its terms, which may be reduced to three 
 supreme classes or categoric terms: (i) absolute being; 
 (2) the felt ; (3) the willed. This principle constitutes the 
 finite being as one, a subject purely real, but determined 
 by its relation to these categoric terms. The diversity of 
 beings, however, arises from the diversity of terms, which, 
 united with the real and proper principle, constitute the 
 being. In order that these beings may be diverse, this 
 diversity must exist from the first moment when the being 
 begins to be, and must be such as potentially to contain all 
 the accidental subsequent development of the being " 
 {Tkeosophy, vol. i. § 722 ; cf. Psychology, vol. i. §§ 164-180). 
 On the possibility of evil, see Theodicy, vol. i. §§ 169-203. 
 
 Sublime 
 questions 
 to which 
 the theme 
 of creation 
 gives occa- 
 sion. 
 
 159. 
 
 From the doctrine of the essential limitations 
 of the universe, science passes to the most sub- 
 lime questions. Do creatable or possible things 
 exist distinct in God ? If not, how do they come 
 to be distinct outside of God ? Are they finite 
 or infinite ? How was God moved to create } 
 It is impossible to give a summary explanation of 
 such lofty questions, with a solution of the difii- 
 culties to which they give birth in the mind.
 
 ARE BEINGS INFINITE IN NUMBER ? 323 
 
 We will not attempt what seemed impossible to Ros- 
 mini. A discussion of most of these questions will be 
 found in the Thcosophy, Theodicy, and Psychology. To one 
 point we may advert, viz. the question whether the number 
 of real beings — let us say, atoms — is infinite. Rosmini 
 replies in the negative on the following grounds : — 
 
 "(i) If the number of possible limitations were infinite, 
 inasmuch as they could not all be created, a selection 
 would have to be made by the creator, and this selection 
 would be impossible, . . . having to be made from an 
 infinite number [cf under §§ 26, II., and 103]. 
 
 " (2) If the number of possible limitations were infinite, 
 inasmuch as they could not all be created, because an 
 infinite number of beings is a contradiction in terms, the 
 power of God would be limited and exceeded by the sphere 
 of possibility of things. 
 
 "(3) But beings in infinite number cannot even exist in 
 the concept of the mind, because an infinite number is a 
 contradiction in terms. 
 
 " (4) . . . The first substance from which all possible 
 finite beings have to be drawn is a first finite. Therefore 
 ... it is evident that possible finite beings cannot be 
 infinite, but are only finite, in number" {Theosophy, vol. i. 
 §723)- 
 
 160. 
 
 The second part of Cosmology divides up the Second 
 universe into (i) pure spirits, (2) souls, (3) bodies, Cosmo- 
 and treats each of these parts in relation to the 
 
 w 
 
 hole. 
 
 161, 
 
 Finally, in the third part, which deals with the Third part 
 order of the universe, we undertake to explain the moioj'. 
 cosmic laws, that is, the laws common to all con-
 
 324 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 tingent beings, and thus we are able to conclude 
 the argument, begun in the preceding parts, with 
 reference to the goodness of the world and to 
 its destinies. 
 
 This branch of cosmogony Rosmini treats in his Theo- 
 dicy, in which, in a popular, rather than a scientific, style, 
 he seeks "to justify the ways of God to man." 
 
 Cosmo- 
 logy con- 
 nected 
 with On- 
 tology and 
 Theology. 
 
 162, 
 
 But these indications show sufficiently that 
 Cosmology cannot be fully treated except in con- 
 nection with Ontology, and especially Theology. 
 How, indeed, can we treat the nature of being as 
 contingent and limited, without at the same time 
 treating, or having previously treated, of neces- 
 sary and unlimited being ? How can we treat of 
 the way in which the world began to exist without 
 treating of the nature and operation of its author? 
 How can we understand temporal things without 
 understanding those that are eternal } How can 
 we explain transient acts without having recourse 
 to immanent acts ? We, therefore, consider it 
 impossible to make Cosmology a complete science 
 by itself. I believe it can only be part of a higher 
 science, which expounds the doctrine of being — 
 being both as abstract and universal, and as, in its 
 act, complete and absolute.
 
 ontology and deontology. 325 
 
 Sciences of Reasoning. 
 
 Ontological and Deontological Sciences. 
 163. 
 
 Intuition supplies the means of reasoning : Sources of 
 
 tlie prin- 
 
 intuition and perception together supply its dpies and 
 material. There is no reasoning which does not reasoning. 
 at last draw its material from these two sciences. 
 The sciences of intuition and perception are 
 sciences of observation. They observe what 
 presents itself to the intuition of the mind, what 
 takes place in the mind itself, and what occurs 
 in the body, in so far as it is an agent in feeling. 
 These observations reflection turns over and over 
 again, and, following the guidance of the principles 
 supplied by the light of being, to which it refers 
 everything, discovers new truths and even reasons 
 to the existence of beings lying beyond the reach 
 of both intuition and perception. 
 
 Reasoning, according to Rosmini, is "a continuous appli- 
 cation of the light of reason," and implies "a duality: 
 (i) the light which is applied ; (2) that to which it is applied. 
 That to which the light of intelligence is applied may either 
 be (i) that light itself, or (2) other things different from 
 that light. These other things are feelings, in themselves 
 blind, or appurtenances of these feelings, e.g. matter, which 
 is a term of animal feeling. When the intellectual light is 
 applied to itself by means of a reflection, it performs at 
 once two offices, that of light and that of object illumi- 
 nated. . . . When it is applied ... to feelings and all that 
 they contain, it produces the inateriatcd sciences" {Logic, § 8). 
 Rosmini objects to the term material sciences, on the ground 
 that material without form can never be the object of 
 science.
 
 326 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Two 
 
 classes of 
 sciences of 
 reasoning. 
 
 164. 
 
 The philosophical sciences of reasoning are 
 divided into two classes. The one treats of beings 
 as they are, and is called Oiitological ; the other of 
 beings as they ought to be, and is called Deonto- 
 logical. 
 
 The Germans would say Wissenschaften des Seienden and 
 Wissoischafteii des Seinsolle7iden. It is hardly necessary to 
 remark that Deontology must not be confounded with 
 Morality or Ethics, which is merely a branch of it, as we 
 shall see. 
 
 Onto 
 
 logical 
 
 science 
 
 I. Ontolozical Sciences. 
 
 165. 
 
 The Ontological Sciences are two : Ontology, 
 properly so called, and Natural Theology. 
 
 Ontology. 
 The three 
 forms of 
 being : the 
 ideal, the 
 real, and 
 the moral. 
 
 A. Ontology. 
 
 166. 
 
 Ontology treats of being in all its extent, as 
 known to man. It treats of being in its essence, 
 and in the three forms in which its essence is — ■ 
 the ideal form, the 7^calform, and the moral foj'm. 
 
 The es- 
 sence iden- 
 tical, the 
 forms 
 utterly dis- 
 tinct. 
 
 167. 
 
 In all these three forms, the essence is identi- 
 cal, while the forms themselves are most distinct 
 and altogether incapable of interchange.
 
 THE THEOSOPHY. 327 
 
 The first three volumes of the TJieosophy are devoted to 
 the subject of Ontology. In the first, the author considers 
 the ontological problem in its various aspects, shows that 
 the highest categories of being are ideality, reality, and 
 morality, and treats of being in its unity. The second 
 and third volumes deal with being in its triplicity. It 
 would be impossible here to follow Rosmini into all the 
 heights and depths of his ontological doctrines. Suffice it 
 to say that, according to his arguments, being exists of 
 necessity in three forms, perfectly distinct and inconfusible, 
 but yet in such a way that each implies the other two. 
 One of these forms, viz. the ideal, is presented as pure 
 cognizability to human intelligence, which, by means of it, 
 is able to reason to the existence of the other two, and to 
 see that all three are truly forms of one identical being. 
 These three forms have all the characteristics of true 
 categories. They are predicates, first, fundamental, com- 
 plete, and divided. Therefore the true categories of being 
 are ideality, reality, and morality, and being itself is triune. 
 Rosmini severely criticizes those who maintain the unity of 
 being alone. He says, " The thought of all Unitarians, 
 from Plotinus to Hegel, performs ^wo operations. It goes 
 from the many to the one, by the way of abstraction, and 
 thus arrives at pure unity, which, as Plotinus says, has 
 nothing in it but indefinite unity,* and is therefore exactly 
 Hegel's naught {nickts) ; and it goes from the One to the 
 Many by way of addition. Two ways powerless to anni- 
 hilate or create, and merely capable of diminishing or 
 destroying the objects before the mind of the philosopher" 
 {Theosophy, vol. i. § 164). Rosmini's criticism of Plotinus 
 and Hegel contains many profound and admirable thoughts. 
 
 168. 
 
 The ideal form cannot be conceived without Ueai 
 the essence of being, for the plain reason that it is 
 the essence of being in so far as knoiuable ; but 
 
 * " Q)h^\v ixov «V favrtj; aK\' eV Ti ' [Eiiiu\{<l.^, i. 9, I, ad iiiit.).
 
 338 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Real form. the real form may be conceived as not having in 
 itself the essence of being. In this case, the real 
 form does not obtain the name either of being or 
 of object, and it is not conceivable unless there be 
 added to it the essence of being, which imparts to 
 it that act of beingf which it would otherwise lack. 
 In this way is partly explained the origin, that is, 
 the creation, of contingent being. 
 
 169. 
 
 Moral The moral form is the relation that real being 
 
 °^'"" holds to itself through the medium of ideal being. 
 
 " The law of perception is, that the limited being per- 
 ceived in feeling shall be referred to ideal being and seen 
 in it, so that there are in perception three things : (i) feeling 
 or reality ; (2) ideal being ; (3) the (imperfect) relation of 
 identity between the two. Ideal being is infinite and 
 essentially complete. Hence, if real being is rationally 
 perceived in relation with ideal being, there is perceived 
 along with it its measure, because, when real beings are 
 referred to the total of being, it is seen which of them has 
 more, and which less, of being realized in it. Now, since 
 the term of practical reason is being, as given by the theo- 
 retic reason* and by all its functions, this term includes 
 perceived being. And since the act of the practical reason 
 consists in adhering to its term, it must adhere to being in 
 the shape in which it is perceived. But it is perceived 
 as measured by ideal being, so that one perceived being is 
 perceived as a larger being, another as a smaller being. 
 Hence it is the law of practical reason that it adheres to 
 beings according to their measure. And even when the 
 subject perceives only one real being, it sees, by comparing it 
 with ideal being, whether it is limited or unlimited, and must 
 
 * See below, under § 217.
 
 MORAL GOOD INFINITE. 329 
 
 adhere to it as it is, that is, with affection measured and 
 proportioned to it. Now, this is the moral principle, * the 
 law of the moral order,' that affectionate recognition shall 
 be distributed to known real beings in proportion to their 
 measure, considered with respect to complete real being, 
 and, if they are several, as compared with each other. 
 
 " Hence we draw another most important consequence — 
 that moral good is infinite in its nature, having always 
 infinite being for its object. Limited being is never seen by 
 perception as alone and as having no relation but to itself, 
 but always as united to the ideal, which is complete and 
 infinite and which measures it. Thus the object of the 
 practical reason never stops with the finite-real being, but 
 always unites it to the infinite-ideal, and so converts it into 
 its good \a-^uQ6v\ adhering to it only in so far as ideal- 
 universal being prescribes. Hence the act of adhesion 
 obeys this ideal-universal being, as its supreme rule and 
 norm, and, therefore, holds it in greater reverence than any 
 finite real. And this is what constitutes the essential 
 characteristic of what is moral — that it always embraces 
 the WHOLE OF BEING, ends in this whole, regulates itself 
 according to this whole. It is, therefore, a good of an 
 infinite nature, not comparable with any finite good, such 
 as eudaemonological good, which is severed from the moral 
 and terminates in the finite" {Psychology, \o\. ii. §§ 1419- 
 1422). 
 
 170. 
 
 Being, in so far as ideal, has the property of Properties 
 being a light and of being an object. ihiee 
 
 In so far as it is real, it has the property of 
 
 being force, of being an active, individual feeling, 
 and hence a sttbjcct. But the sentient principle or 
 subject may have as its term something which is 
 not itself, as extension and body, and this term is 
 neither object nor subject, but is outside the subject.
 
 330 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 It is called extra-subject. But this extra-subject, 
 as such, has an existence only in relation to the 
 subject whose term it is. The modes, therefore, 
 of real being are two — -the subjective and the extra- 
 subjective. 
 
 In so far as being is moral, it has the property 
 of being an act which puts the subject in harmony 
 with the object, of being a perfecting power, 
 completing the subject by uniting it, and rendering 
 it adequate to, the object-bliss of being. 
 
 Rosmini distinguishes between ideality as light and 
 ideality as object, or rather he distinguishes ideal being, 
 which \s per se manifest, into being as manifesting and being 
 as manifested. It is Hke light, which not only makes other 
 things visible, but is visible itself So long as we know 
 ideal being merely as such, we have only an anoetic know- 
 ledge of it ; whereas, when we know it as possessing the 
 three attributes of manifest, manifesting, and manifested, 
 we have a dianoetic knowledge of it. These terms anoetic 
 and dianoetic are admirably adapted to distinguishing the 
 two kinds of knowledge which it is possible to have of unity : 
 first, as prior to multiplicity ; and, second, as subsequent to 
 multiplicity. 
 
 171. 
 
 The three If we wisli to classify, in the most summary 
 
 the foun- way, the limited beings that come within the range 
 of the of human knowledge, they may all be reduced to 
 
 caegories. j-|-^gse three ultimate classes — ideal beings, real 
 beings, and moral beings ; so that the three pri7nor- 
 dial forms of being are also the foundation of 
 
 the categories.'"' 
 
 See above, under § 167.
 
 CATEGORIES AND GENERA. 331 
 
 172. 
 
 The categories are classes more extensive than The 
 
 categories 
 
 genera. They are not genera, and much less are differ from 
 
 1 • 1 • 1 T • 1 genera 
 
 they species, smce the same bemg which divides and 
 itself into genera and species belongs to all the 
 three categories. 
 
 Since it is the same identical being that appears in all 
 the three categories, these categories, of course, cannot be 
 genera or species, which do not distinguish aspects of the 
 same thing, but include different things under one aspect. 
 The categories are principles of plurality, whereas genera 
 and species are principles of unity. The three categories, 
 in a certain way, correspond to the three elements of the 
 concept which forms the ground of the judgment. When 
 I say, "Man is rational," the subject is real ; the predicate, 
 ideal ; and the copula, moral. In other words, in making 
 this affirmation, I set a reality, man, and an idea, rational, 
 both at once against the background of being, which, 
 therefore, at once measures both of them absolutely and 
 relatively to each other. This measure expresses their 
 absolute and relative moral worth. 
 
 173. 
 When we examine being in its full extent, we Law of the 
 
 " synthcsism 
 
 discover that it has an internal order, wonderful of being. 
 and unchangeable, supplying rich material to on- 
 tology. From this order we gather, among other 
 laws, the law of the synthesis of being, which 
 manifests itself in a thousand ways, but chiefly in 
 the form of the truth : — Being cannot exist under 
 one of its three forms without existing under the 
 other two, although, to human thought, being,
 
 332 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L SYS TEM. 
 
 even under a single form, appears as standing 
 alone and is perceivable in a distinct mode. 
 
 The section explains what may, at first sight, seem an 
 obscurity, or even a paradox, in Rosmini's system. In the 
 act of perception, zve unite the essence of being, as intuited 
 by us, to the feeling which constitutes the reality of the 
 thing perceived, and yet no sooner have we done so than 
 we see that the two are and were united independently of 
 us. In other words, our consciousness consists in doing 
 for ourselves, or with relation to ourselves, what is already 
 done absolutely. In a certain sense, therefore, each man 
 creates his own world ; but every sane man knows perfectly 
 that he does not create the world. The same strange phe- 
 nomenon occurs in the case of the different senses. A table, 
 as I know it, is made up of sensations that come through at 
 least three senses and an unknown number of nerves. Yet, 
 when these sensations are put together by the activity of my 
 organism, I immediately recognize the result as something 
 that was put together quite independently of them. 
 Though, therefore, my senses (with the aid, of course, of 
 intelligence) created the table for me, yet the table was 
 created absolutely, perhaps, long before I was born. 
 
 Ontology 
 examines 
 the re- 
 cesses 
 of being to 
 find the 
 reason for 
 the distri- 
 bution of 
 being into 
 genera and 
 species. 
 
 174. 
 
 Ontology not only gives us the theory of the 
 three primordial forms of being and of the identity 
 of being in all the three, but it also distributes the 
 same identical beinor in all its three forms, into 
 genera, species, and individuals, and searches for 
 the orround of this distribution in the recesses of 
 being itself. It thus gradually comes to discover 
 how being is susceptible of limitation, and paves 
 the way for a doctrine of the origin of limited and 
 contingent being — a doctrine which belongs to 
 Cosmology.
 
 NATURAL THEOLOGY. 33: 
 
 175- 
 
 In like manner, it treats of the essential pro- it also 
 
 SCCliS tllG 
 
 perties of being, deducing them from the principle essential 
 of cognition. Being is the object of thought, which of b^hig 
 it applies to reasoning, by means of this other nght of 
 principle : If a being, when deprived of a given ^°^"'^^°^^* 
 property, ceases to be thinkable, that property is 
 essential to it. This is the principle of cognition 
 itself, expressed in ontological form. Hence it 
 deduces the ontological properties which limited 
 beings must necessarily share, in order to be 
 possible. This doctrine is also necessary to Cos- 
 mology. 
 
 For example, since matter cannot be thought except 
 as extended, extension is essential to it. Rosmini would 
 also say that since God cannot be thought except as real, 
 reality is one of His essential attributes, and, therefore, He 
 is not a mere ideal postulate of the reason, but a subsistent 
 reality. 
 
 B. Natural Theology. 
 
 176. 
 
 But human thought does not totally compre- Natural 
 hend being as it is in itself. This is the subject 
 of Theology. Theology, therefore, is the science 
 which treats of being as it is in itself, that is, in so 
 far as our minds discover that being extends far 
 beyond that part which is manifested to us ; in §l 
 word, it treats of Absolute Being, of God.
 
 334 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Natural Theology, called by the Greeks BeoXoyia, is the 
 third of the sciences included under Theosophy, Cosmology 
 and Ontology being the other two. 
 
 177. 
 
 The idea The being which falls naturally under the 
 
 we have of . . . r 1 1 • i 1 • • 1 
 
 God is not intiiition oi the human mind, because it is the very 
 but nega- cssence of being, is unlimited ; nevertheless it is 
 not absolute being, since intuition catches the 
 essence of being under only one of its three forms, 
 the ideal. The being which falls under our per- 
 ception is only a partial realization of being, a 
 realization distinct from the essence of being ; while 
 feeling, which is the material of perception, is only 
 the real form of being ; so that the understanding, 
 if it wishes to perceive it, has to compound it with 
 the essence of being, although this essence, being 
 eternal, does not properly belong to contingent 
 feeling. Hence the materials at our disposal for 
 reasoning out a complete science of being are im- 
 perfect and defective. Being, therefore, in its 
 totality and fulness, is not granted to human 
 experience. We cannot know Jioiv it is, although 
 we may know that it is in a mode going beyond 
 the reach of human intelliofence. This sort of 
 cognition is called negative,^ and is the only sort 
 possible in Natural Theology, which treats of 
 being in its absoluteness, of being, not as it is 
 known to man, but as it is in itself. 
 
 * See below under § 182.
 
 PROOFS OF GOD'S EXISTENCE. 335 
 
 178. 
 
 Natural Theology, in the first place, demon- 
 strates the existence of God, Of the many 
 arguments by which it does this, the principal 
 may be reduced to four. 
 
 The first it derives from the essence of beinp- ^'Y^^} P'"'^°f 
 
 •^ ''of the ex- 
 
 which we intuite, proving that it is not nothing, i'^tence of 
 but something eternal and necessary. Now, it 
 could not have these attributes, if it did not 
 subsist identical under the other two forms of 
 reality and morality. But the essence of being 
 is infinite, and, existing under all three forms, it 
 is being in every way infinite and absolute ; it is 
 God. 
 
 It is plain enough that the ideal being which we intuite, 
 being essentially objective, involves subjective, that is, real 
 being, as well as a relation between itself and such real 
 being. This relation is moral being. 
 
 179, 
 
 The second proof of God's existence is derived Second 
 from the ideal form of being. This ideal form is 
 the light which creates intelligence ; it is eternal 
 light and etei'nal object, hence there must be an 
 eternal mind, an eteimal subject. This light is 
 unlimited : hence this subject must have in- 
 finite wisdom, and its knowledge must not be a 
 transient act ; in it everything must be known 
 through itself A subject which, at the same time,
 
 336 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 exists as an infinite object is the most perfect 
 possible union of the two, and hence it is the in- 
 finite act ofi goodness or moral perfection that con- 
 stitutes the third primordial form of being. This 
 being is, therefore, absolute — is God. 
 
 1 80. 
 
 Third The third proof is derived from real being, 
 
 proof. . . . ry^, . . . f. 
 
 given to us m perception. i his is the proof 
 
 above referred to, in which the mind rises from 
 
 the contingent to the necessary, to the first cause 
 
 and ground of all (§ 103). 
 
 ibi. 
 
 Fourth The fourth proof is derived from the moral 
 
 fiorm known toman. Infinite and irresistible is the 
 authority of the moral law, infinite the excellence 
 of virtue and the ignobleness of vice. This bind- 
 ing force, this dignity of the moral law, is not 
 nothing, and must, therefore, be eternal, necessary, 
 absolute. But it would be nothing, if it did not 
 exist in an absolute being. The essence of holi- 
 ness belongs to the essence of being, and is its 
 last complement ; it belongs to the essence of 
 beinof as much as the other two forms do. There 
 is, therefore, an absolute being, God. 
 
 This section recalls to one's mind Kant's Categorical 
 Imperative, which that philosopher considered the founda- 
 tion of all morality, and upon which he based the three 
 necessary convictions of freedom, immortality, and the 
 existence of God. Rosmini's view, however, is very dif-
 
 OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD NEGATIVE-IDEAL. 337 
 
 ferent from Kant's. According to the latter, the moral 
 principle is a mere empirical command whose ground is 
 not seen, but which compels us ideally to postulate free- 
 dom, immortality, and God. According to the former, the 
 ground of morality is given in the clear intellectual in- 
 tuition of being, which being enables us to infer the real 
 existence of those things which Kant regarded as mere 
 ideal postulates. See under § 115. 
 
 1^52. 
 Havinor proved the existence of God, Natural Consider- 
 
 . . . . ing the 
 
 Theology must seek to determine precisely in manner in 
 
 1 -1 • 1 1 1 1 • • /• which we 
 
 what manner, without gomg beyond the hmits of know 
 
 1 /^ 1 T 1 1 God, we 
 
 nature, we may know (jrod. It shows that we can may call 
 know Him only through reasoning. Being unable ledge of 
 
 • ■t . • . • , , • r^ ^ 11' him nejra- 
 
 either to mtuite or to perceive God naturally in Uve-ideai. 
 this life, we require reasoning to enable us to dis- 
 cover His existence. We do so, as we have seen, 
 by comparing those beings which we intuite and 
 perceive with the essence of being, and observing, 
 on the one hand, that they do not exhaust it, and, 
 on the other, that it must be exhausted, fully 
 realized, and completed. This we know from the 
 inherent necessity of the very essence of being 
 which we intuite. But of this absolute being, 
 which we neither intuite nor perceive, we can know 
 no more than is shown us by the necessity of the 
 essence of being, the object in the idea. This is 
 the limit of the knowledge which we can have of 
 God in the natural order, and hence our knowledge 
 of the divine nature may be called a negative-ideal 
 knowledge.
 
 338 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Those who accuse Rosmini of Ontologism, that is, of 
 claiming that we see God naturally, only show that they 
 either have not read, or not understood, his philosophy. 
 No thinker ever more pointedly denied to man the direct 
 vision of God than Rosmini. In this he goes even beyond 
 St. Thomas, who says, " Intellectiis separatus, secundum 
 fidei docnmenta, est ipse Detts, qui est creator animce, et in 
 quo solo beatificatiir. . . . Unde ab ipso anima hnmana lumen 
 intellectuale participat " {Sum. TJicoL, i. q. 79, art. 4. concl.), 
 and still further beyond St. Augustine, who writes : " Sohis 
 Dens dat intellectum ; Dens enim per se ipsuui, quod lux est, 
 illuminat pias inentes" {Enarrat. in Psabn cxviii., vers. Ji). 
 
 The following declaration expresses Rosmini's true 
 view: " Is initial being God Himself.'' I answer. No, be- 
 cause it lacks something which belongs to the divine 
 essence. It lacks term, completion, which is equivalent to 
 saying that it lacks self-subsistence, reality, and, if the 
 object of conception lacks anything, be it what it may, the 
 thing perceived is not God, since, as Sebadius excellently 
 says, * Non proprium Dei, nisi plenum et perfectum,' that is, 
 that being which is deficient in anything is not God. At 
 the same time, if being should complete itself, that is, if we 
 should see being, not initially but completely, then what we 
 should see would deserve the name of God. To the being, 
 therefore, which we see naturally, the name of God does 
 not belong, because things are named in so far as they are 
 conceived. The object of conception changes essentially, 
 according to the different modes of conceiving it, and hence 
 receives different names. 
 
 " Is the initial being which we see a created being .? I 
 answer that it may be called created, in St. Thomas's sense, 
 not because it is in itself created, but because it is created 
 in us, that is, in so far as it is shown to us and seen by us. 
 In so far as it is limited by the imperfection of our seeing, 
 in so far it is created. 
 
 " Is initial being numerically the same in all men .-* 
 Yes, and it is for that reason that the human race is one. 
 It does not follow from this that all men have one intellect, 
 as the Arabs erroneously held, any more than it follows that
 
 NEGATIVE-IDEAL KNOWLEDGE.. 339 
 
 they all have one pair of eyes, because they all see one sun. 
 The seeing principle and the seen object are different : the 
 seeing principles are many; the object seen by them is one. 
 Hence arise agreement in truth and the possibility of 
 human society and of union with God." (From a letter 
 written by Rosmini in 1834, printed in La Sapienza, vol. i. 
 pp. 321 sqq., and in Del Lunie deW Intelletto, pp. 424 sqq.) 
 
 In regard to negative cognition, Rosmini says, " Nega- 
 tive cognition differs from positive cognition in this, that 
 instead of perception — that is, instead of sensation or the 
 traces which sensation leaves in us — there is in negative 
 cognition only a sign, an indication of the thing. We must 
 explain, with all clearness, this important difference. In 
 order that I may say, in my inner thought, A thing exists, 
 and so have a persuasion of its real subsistence, I must in 
 some way think this thing to which I apply the predicate of 
 existence, and this thought of the thing is the subject, so to 
 speak, in the judgment in question. Now, I may, in some 
 way, think a thing — I may, in some way, have a subject of 
 which I predicate existence — even if I have not perceived 
 that thing, even if that thing has not acted directly upon 
 me and thus revealed itself to me. It is sufficient that 
 I have some indication of this object, inducing me to fix 
 my attention on it, without its being necessary that this 
 indication should reveal to me anything beyond its mere 
 existence. For example, if some one should hold up to me 
 his closed hand and tell me there was something inside it, 
 this affirmation, if I believed it, would be to me an indica- 
 tion making me think of something inside that closed hand, 
 even although I did not see it, even although it were not 
 there, and I knew nothing more about it. 
 
 " In order to make this more clear, let us first analyze 
 positive cognition, and then mark the difference between it 
 and negative cognition. In positive cognition, we observe 
 that sensation (or the traces which it leaves in us) does 
 three things in us : (i) it gives us a ground which persuades 
 us that a being subsists ; (2) it determines a fixed point on 
 which we shall direct our attention, so that our minds may 
 distinguish that being which we have found to subsist from
 
 340 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 all other beings ; and (3) it enables us to have a vision of 
 that being (if I may be allowed to use such an expression), 
 that is, an example of its immediate influence on us, an 
 effect which shows us the nature of that operating cause, and 
 shares with us that activity whereby it subsists. Now, this 
 third effect of sensation is that which gives light to the 
 perception of the thing, and which renders our cognition of 
 it clear, in such a way that we are able to affirm a great 
 deal in regard to its mode of existence, in a word, is what 
 produces that cognition of the thing which I call positive. 
 But, even without this clearness of cognition or thought, we 
 may have a kind of thought, a kind of cognition ; that is, 
 we may think that a thing subsists, from merely having a 
 rational ground or an indication of it, provided this indi- 
 cation be such as to determine it and distinguish it from 
 other things. And does not this happen in the case of 
 every thing which is not seen by us, but whose existence 
 we, nevertheless, affirm, because there exists a certain effect 
 of it, whose cause is altogether veiled from us and in no 
 manner perceived by us .■* Such a cognition is blunt and 
 blind, so to speak, because it wants vision, wants that 
 light which springs from the immediate and adequate im- 
 pression of the thing upon us, in our feeling ; but still it is 
 something, and this cognition is that which, in order to 
 distinguish it from the others, we have thought might be 
 called negative. 
 
 " Negative cognition, therefore, also comprehends three 
 parts, which are the following: — (i) a ground from which I 
 argue that a being exists, and hence affirm it; (2) an indica- 
 tion or sign which is always a relation between this being 
 not perceived by me, and other beings which are perceived 
 by me, which relation determines this being for me, and 
 distinguishes it from others ; (3) finally, the result of this 
 determining relation, which is, that I am able to deny, if 
 not to affirm, many things with regard to this being ; that 
 is, to deny that it is any of the things perceived by me. 
 From this last step, by which I am able to say what the 
 thing known negatively is not, arises the term negative 
 cognition, by which it is called.
 
 NEGATIVE-IDEAL COGNITION. 341 
 
 "And such is the cognition which man naturally has 
 of God in this hfe. The first two parts of this cognition 
 merge into one, because the ground upon which I infer 
 that God subsists is the relation which God has with the 
 universe, as its author and principle. But I divide this 
 relation into two parts, because it may be considered under 
 two aspects ; that is, either as a ground enabling me to 
 infer the subsistence of a being, or as a detennination of 
 that being, enabling me to know it as a being which must 
 be the principle of all things, and, hence, must be different 
 from all other things. And for this distinction into two 
 parts, Avhich I think it well to make, of the relation 
 between perceived things and God, there is a second ra- 
 tional motive in this, that, from considering the universe 
 of created things as a whole requiring a cause, I am able 
 to infer that God subsists. When, on the other hand, I 
 come to determine this being as the cause of all things, 
 the determination becomes all the more perfect, the more 
 carefully I analyze the universe and distinguish the ulti- 
 mate essences of which it is made up, those essences which 
 cannot be confounded together in a real genus, and 
 therefore I consider God apart, as cause and principle of 
 each of these essences. 
 
 " It follows from this that, in our own knowledge and 
 judgment concerning the existence of God, the sign which 
 performs the part of subject, and to which I apply ideal 
 being, is not a perception or vision of the real thing, but is 
 itself a complex of ideas. Relations are only so many 
 ideal beings, which can exist nowhere except in the mind. 
 Nor is it by any means absurd that purely mental beings 
 {esseri), though each by itself does not determine an indi- 
 vidual, but only genera and species, should, when taken 
 together, determine a single being. This is exactly what 
 happens commonly in algebra, in which, although all the 
 letters and signs taken separately are indeterminate, and 
 hence do not express any particular number, yet, when com- 
 bined according to the conditions of the problem, they give 
 a determinate result in all those problems which are called 
 determinate, and indicate and fix a single number, which
 
 342 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 alone satisfies the conditions of the problem. In the same 
 way, in the notion of God, although the ideas of cause and 
 all other ideas which form part of it are generic and 
 specific, and, therefore, indeterminate, yet, when put together, 
 these ideas determine the being which they are meant to 
 express, in such a way that no other can answer to them, 
 and thus God becomes determined, so to speak, by a 
 certain sign and character. 
 
 " Moreover, those ideas which give rise, so to speak, to 
 the sign or determination whereby the mind thinks God, 
 are of such a kind, and united in such a manner, that they 
 form a ground for inferring the real subsistence of the 
 divinity. They, therefore, not only perform the part of 
 proper names . . . which can only direct the attention of 
 the mind by means of a sensible sign, in which, so to 
 speak, the mind sees the possible thing without inferring or 
 believing in its subsistence ; but they have in them a force 
 which compels the mind to believe in the existence of God. 
 At the same time, these ideas which mark the divine 
 essence, and likewise convince us of the necessity of His 
 subsistence, are not the divine being itself; they only con- 
 tain the proof of it. This being still remains concealed 
 behind a veil : we do not perceive it. The concept of God 
 is, therefore, only a sign, an indication of Him ; such is the 
 nature of negative cognition. In a word, the name of God, 
 that name which in the Holy Scriptures is frequently taken 
 for God Himself,* as being all that in this life is manifest 
 to us of God, is only this intellectual name of which we are 
 speaking. It is not God Himself f In the concept, there- 
 
 * Cf. Zechaiiah xiv. 9: "In that day shall there be one Lord, and His 
 name one." 
 
 t One is here naturally reminded of Herakleitos' Logos, of which it is said, 
 "Although the Logos always speaks, yet men are without understanding for it, 
 both before they hear it, and at first, even after they have heard it. For 
 though all things have birth in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be 
 unaware of it" (Byvvater, Heradili Ephesii Fragmenta, p. i.). St. Thomas 
 agrees exactly with Rosmini : "Cum demonstratur causa per effectum, necesse 
 est uti effectu definitionis causae ad demonstrandum causam esse, et hoc maxime 
 contingit in Deo : quia ad probandum aliquid esse, necesse est accipere pro 
 medio quid significet nomen, non autem quod quid est, quia qusestio, quid est, 
 sequitur qujestionem, an est. Nomina autem Dei imponuntur ab efl'cctibus, ut
 
 NEGATIVE-IDEAL COGNITION. 343 
 
 fore, which we can have of God, perception or vision is 
 replaced by this intellective name of which we speak, a 
 name resulting from a complex of ideas expressing rela- 
 tions to the universe, which determine and mark a being 
 outside of all, who is called God. This intellective name 
 of God, this concept, this complex of ideas, is, as it were, 
 the subject of the following judgment : — God exists ; and 
 the predicate in this judgment is the idea of existence, that 
 is, universal being, which we apply to this subject conceived 
 by us and determined in a manner purely ideal. In the 
 same way, if a person worthy of belief tells me that there 
 is something behind a curtain, I have not the perception 
 or vision of this thing, because it is cut off from me by the 
 curtain which covers it, and yet I have a certain conception 
 of it in my mind, made up of ideas, that is, of the idea of 
 a particular indeterminate being, and of the relation of place 
 which this being has with the curtain behind which it is 
 hidden; and this concept is sufficient to determine my 
 attention to think a thing, although it be unknown, and it 
 is a sign to me, a name of the thing, to which I then direct 
 the judgment, that this thing, however thought in this con- 
 cept of mine, really exists. In this judgment I apply the 
 idea of existence to the thing thus ideally conceived, as a 
 predicate to a subject. 
 
 " Nevertheless, we must note the very great difference 
 that exists between the negative cognition which we have 
 of finite things — as, for example, of the unknown thing hid 
 from- us behind a veil — and the negative cognition which 
 we have of God. This difference consists in two things. In 
 the first place, the hidden finite thing has, in every case, some 
 resemblance to other things perceived by us, a resemblance 
 either generic or specific, and, hence, we may imagine some- 
 thing about it — for example, that it is some body or another 
 — according to the indications given us ; we may imagine 
 that generic or specific essence which it has in common 
 
 postea ostendetur. Uncle demonstrando Deum esse, per effectum, accipere 
 possumus pro medio quid significet hoc nomen Dens. . . . Sic, ex effectibus 
 Dei potest demonstrari Deum esse, licet per eos non perfecte possimus euin 
 cognoscere secundum suam essentiam " {Sum. Theol., i. q. 2, art. 2, ad fin. ; 
 of. Sum. contra Gcnles, i. capp. x.-xii.).
 
 344 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 with other things previously perceived by us. On the con- 
 trary, God has no essence, generic or specific, in common 
 with other things. We can only say that, in a certain sense. 
 He has, in common with other things, the universal essence 
 or being, inasmuch as being is the only thing that can be 
 predicated of God and of created things in the same sense, 
 or, as the Schoolmen said, nnivoce* Hence the concept of 
 God which we can have, and which takes the place of 
 perception, or of subject in the judgment which pronounces 
 His existence, can have no other element than being, and 
 no other idea or essence, generic or, a fortiori, specific ; so 
 that all the relations which we can find between God and 
 other things give us only a certain increase of light and 
 distinctness in our conception of being, and nothing more. 
 This distinctness and light arise from the community of 
 ideal being between the created things which participate 
 in it and their cause, which is being itself. Indeed, if there 
 were no such community, there would be no vehicle or 
 
 * Rosmini here appends the following note: — "This does not mean that 
 God and created things have being in the same manner; but it is the same 
 being that we predicate of God and of created things, although in a different 
 manner. Created things have being ; God is being. Creatures, inasmuch 
 as they have being, have it only in part : God, being being, is all being, being 
 itself. Being, before it is predicated, is common to God and created things ; 
 but being, after it is predicated, becomes proper, so that the being of created 
 things is altogether different from that of God, and that of the former can in no 
 way be confounded with that of the latter." Aristotle saw this truth clearly, 
 when he denied that being was a genus : "eTrel ThrfaQhv laaxois Kfjerat tw ovti . . . 
 SriXov dis ovK i.v etrj KOiyov ri Kad6\ov /col eV ' oh yap hv iAeyer iv ■ndffais Ta7s 
 KaTTiyopiais, a\\' 4v fj.ia novri " (Eth. A'ik., i. 4 ; IO96 a, 23 sq.; cf. l\Ictaph., iv. 
 10; 1018 a, 35, and Brentano, Von der mannigfachen Bednitung dcs Seieridcn 
 nach Aristofeles, pp. 4 sq., 85 sqq.) Had Hegel seen this, it would have saved 
 him the trouble of writing his Logic. 
 
 There is a good deal of difficulty about the expression " Created things 
 have being." If that which has is different from that which is had, it is clear 
 that being cannot be predicated of the former as such. It must, therefore, be a 
 i:oji-ens, a fj.^ ov, and this Rosmini frankly admits (see under § 26). Cf. Buroni, 
 De!P Essere e del Conoscere, p. 96, where we read, " Non-being (;?<7«-^«j) is 
 not nothing ; on the contrary, it is the thing which is, or the /e/t rea/. This 
 concept of not-being {/mti uv) is the great discovery, so to sj^eak, which the 
 immortal genius of Plato made in philosophy, the addition which he made to 
 the being of the Eleatics." This is entirely true, if being be taken to mean 
 being an object, as it ought to be. Buroni speaks of the chiaroscuro of percep- 
 tion (Ibid., p. 95 sq.). What is meant by saying that created things have being 
 might be expressed in Greek by saying, "Ta ovra. iarl re. tov (hat fitTixovra.'
 
 NEGATIVE-IDEAL COGNITION. 345 
 
 passage whereby the mind of the creature could rise to a 
 determinate concept of the Creator. This first difference 
 between the negative cognition of a finite thing and the 
 negative cognition of God has reference to the concept 
 expressed in the word GOD, which plays the part of subject 
 in the judgment : God exists. The second difference has 
 reference to the predicate expressed by the word exists, 
 and is this. When I say a finite thing exists, I give, by 
 my affirmation, to this thing an existence such as it has, 
 that is, a participated and partial existence. On the con- 
 trary, when I affirm the existence of God, I give to God 
 all existence, all possible being, because such and so great 
 is the existence that belongs to him. Hence a singular 
 thing happens in the judgment whereby we affirm that 
 God exists, viz. that subject and predicate are identical. 
 The ideal concept of God is entirely composed of pure 
 being, and not of any other idea, generic or specific ; so 
 that all the notions which enter into that concept are only 
 being itself, analyzed and distinguished, without ever going 
 beyond universal being ; and the predicate, that which is 
 affirmed, is also the same being. The only difference 
 is, that the being \n\\\z\\ forms the subject of the judgment 
 is still ideal, while that being which forms the predicate is 
 posited as real. Hence, when we say: God exists, w^e mean: 
 Being exists, or more fully. The Being which I conceive is 
 a real, subsistent being; and this proposition, this definition 
 of God, is the principle of Natural Theology. 
 
 " Let us conclude : (i) We have, therefore, a concept of 
 God, ideal indeed, but determinate and not going beyond 
 that of being. (2) We affirm the real subsistence of this 
 being so conceived. In the divine nature we affirm to 
 ourselves nothing real but being — the initial act of being. 
 The thing of which we affirm being is known to us only by 
 a purely ideal concept. If, then, we should wish to present 
 in another manner the analysis of our cognition of God, we 
 might divide it as follows: — (i) a positive part, covd^xo.- 
 hending the affirmation of pure subsistence (predicate) ; (2) 
 an ideal part, comprehending the concept which we have 
 of God, and which determines for us the divine being ;
 
 346 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 (3) a negative part, comprehending all that we cm deny of 
 God, when, with such negations, we distinguish Him from 
 all other things. The first of these three parts does not, 
 properly speaking, form a cognition, and cannot receive 
 this name, but only that of affirmation, of assent given to 
 cognition, and hence of persuasion arising in us. Our cog- 
 nition of God, therefore, properly so called, is drawn from 
 the other two parts, and hence the cognition which, with 
 the natural light, we can have in this life of the Supreme 
 Being, may very properly be called ideal-negative cogni- 
 tion" {La Sapienza, vol. ii. No. 7, pp. 410-417). 
 
 In saying that being may be predicated of God and of 
 created things tmivoce {(TvvojvvfiMg, as Aristotle would say), 
 Rosmini stands in apparent contradiction with St. Thomas, 
 and, indeed, with the Schoolmen generally. St. Thomas 
 devotes a whole chapter of his Snmma contra Gentes to 
 proving that " Nihil de Deo et rebtis aliis nnivoce prcsdi- 
 catur" (i. cap. xxxii.). The contradiction, however, is much 
 more apparent than real. When Rosmini says that being is 
 predicated of God and created things in the same sense, but 
 not in the same mode, he means exactly the same thing as 
 St. Thomas does when he says, " Q7iod ea qncs diciintnr de 
 Deo et creatnris analogice diamtur" {Ibid., cap. xxxiv.). 
 The being of God has the same relation to His reality that 
 a man's being has to his. This principle is universal. 
 Being cannot be predicated even of any two created things 
 Miiivoce, but only analogice. The being of a horse is not 
 the being of a dog ; nor is the being of one horse the being 
 of another. In the real world there is no universality. 
 
 " To predicate existence univocally," says Rosmini, 
 " means to predicate existence of different things, using 
 the word in the same signification. Although, however, the 
 word existence is predicated of God and of every created 
 being in the same sense, and hence univocally, it must not 
 be supposed that it is predicated of the two in the same 
 mode, because to predicate means to unite or attribute 
 something to a subject. Now, the mind, which considers 
 created things as beings, does not attribute existence to 
 them in the same mode in which it attributes it to God ;
 
 OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 347 
 
 but it attributes existence to God as something essentially 
 belonging to Him ; to created things, as something partici- 
 pated : to God as essential and necessary; to created things, 
 as accidental. It unites being with God, by identifying it 
 with Him ; to created things, by distinguishing it from them. 
 Created things are known to exist by means of the idea of 
 existence, whereas God is not only known to exist by 
 means of this idea, but He is identical with this idea, that 
 is, with the essence whereby He is intuited" {Theosophy, 
 vol. iv. p. 468). In other words, God is esse, elvai, Sein, 
 whereas created things are only entia, ovra, Seiende. It is 
 unfortunate that this distinction cannot be brought out in 
 English (or French) by means of inflectional forms. Being, 
 in English, is both the verbal noun expressing the essence 
 of being, the gerund expressing the act of the same, and 
 the participle expressing participation in the same. The 
 Italian '^ Uessere, essendo eiite" is, in English, "Being, being 
 being." On the meaning of the participle (^ero)^//), see 
 Grammar of Dionysios Thrax, in Bekker's A^iecdota Greeca, 
 vol. ii. pp. 369 sqq. (or my translation of the same. Journal 
 Spec. Philos., vol. viii. [1874] pp. 326 sqq.); Lersch, Die 
 SpracJipJiilosophie der Alien, vol. ii. pp. 93, 130; Schmidt, 
 Beitrdge ziir Gesch. der Gramniatik des Griech. nnd des 
 Latein.,pp.44.g sqq.; Steinthal, Gesch. der Sprachwissenschaft 
 bei den Griechen nnd Roinern, pp. 659. 
 
 183. 
 
 This necessity proves to us two things : Jirst, Two ways 
 that the defects and limitations of the beings which our minds 
 we know cannot belong to God ; second, that all Absolute 
 the perfections of the beings which we know must 
 belong to God, although not in the way in which 
 they are in the beings known to us, for the reason 
 that in these beings they are either contingent or 
 limited or divided (in a word, essentially subject
 
 548 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 to some limitation or division), whereas, in the 
 Supreme Being, they must necessarily exist with- 
 out division or limit, that is, in a mode altogether 
 different, or rather, without mode. These two 
 ways of knowing the Absolute Being are usually 
 called Via Exclitsionis and Via Eminentice. 
 
 Theology 
 must sup- 
 plement 
 what was 
 said in the 
 Cosmo- 
 logy of the 
 divine ope- 
 rations ad 
 extra. 
 
 184. 
 
 Having discovered the ways in which our 
 thought shapes the doctrine concerning God, we 
 must pass on to set forth that doctrine which con- 
 templates God in Himself, and as the author of the 
 world, in relation to created things, and complete, 
 in this second part, what was said of the divine 
 operations ad extra in the Cosmology. 
 
 Of the 
 divine 
 essence. 
 
 185. 
 
 God, as considered in Himself, is the subject 
 of that part of Natural Theology, which treats of 
 the divine essence. It begins by explaining the 
 attributes of this essence. 
 
 Rosmini treats this subject in many parts of his Theo- 
 sophy, particularly in the second, third, and fourth volumes. 
 
 Can the 
 human in- 
 telligence, 
 fortified by 
 revelation, 
 know that 
 the divine 
 
 186. 
 
 It then examines whether the human intel- 
 ligence, developed and rendered potent by revela- 
 tion, can know that the divine essence must be in 
 three Persons. This question it answers in the
 
 THEODICY. 349 
 
 affirmative, as, indeed, it was answered by two essence 
 
 must exist 
 
 modern theologians, Fathers Ermenegildo Pini and in three 
 
 Persons ? 
 
 Mastrofini. It is, nevertheless, certain that the 
 knowledge of the Trinity accessible to reason is 
 merely negative-ideal. 
 
 Ermenegildo Pini was born in 1739, and died in 1825. 
 He was the author of a work called Protologia, in which he 
 sought to discover what in thought was the first/^r se. He 
 also wrote Dialogues on Architecture. The Abbe Mastro- 
 fini was born in 1763 and died in 1845. He wrote a work 
 of much merit entitled De Deo Uno et Trino, published in 
 18 1 5, and another called Metajisica Sublime. 
 
 187. 
 In treating of God as the author of things. On the 
 
 crecitivG 
 
 Theology deals mainly with the relation in which act. 
 the creative act stands to the act of the divine 
 essence and to the act of created things themselves, 
 as existing. 
 
 Applying, then, to the Creator of the Universe The expo- 
 the attributes of infinite power, knov/ledge and divine at- 
 
 , , 1 , P . tributes 
 
 goodness already spoken 01, we enter upon the leads to 
 very extensive subject of the conservation and which ^'^^' 
 government of the universe, and of its predestined Ihe pJw'cr, 
 end and aim. This part of Theology, which con- an?go"od. 
 templates the marks of God's attributes in the '']^^\ °^ 
 
 A (jod as 
 
 world — that is, the providence which guides events displayed 
 according to an eternal design, the power which ^^"^id. 
 conducts them to the fulfilment of that design
 
 35° 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 without trenching upon the liberty of intelligent 
 creatures, and the goodness, holiness, and blessed- 
 ness bestowed on these creatures in the greatest 
 possible measure (without prejudice to the divine 
 attributes), which bestowal is the final aim of the 
 whole — is properly denominated Theodicy. 
 
 These questions are all treated in Rosmini's Theodicy, 
 the second book of which was published as an Essay as 
 early as 1826, and the first and second together in the 
 Milan edition of his Opiiscoli Filosofici (1827-28). The 
 third book was not written until 1844. The work, there- 
 fore, shows some unevenness of style. The first book, 
 which "is logical, proposes and prescribes the rules which 
 human thought ought to follow in its judgments regarding 
 the dispensations of divine providence." The second book, 
 which is physical, " is a continued meditation on the laws 
 of nature, on the essential limitations of the created, and on 
 the concatenation of causes." The third book is Jiyper- 
 physical, and treats of " the manner in which the action of 
 God intervenes in nature, and the laws which it follows 
 in acting, in consequence of His divine attributes." The 
 three books combat respectively — (i) errors arising from 
 logical ignorance; (2) errors arising from physical ignorance; 
 and {3) errors arising from teleological ignorance (Preface 
 to Theodicy). 
 
 Deonto- 
 
 logical 
 
 Sciences. 
 
 2. Deontological Sciences. 
 
 189. 
 
 The Deontological Sciences are all those that 
 treat of the perfection of being and the way in 
 which this perfection may be acquired or produced 
 or lost.
 
 RELATIONS OF PERFECTION. 351 
 
 190. 
 
 DeoJttolop'v \s either general or special. Gencral^^onto- 
 
 ... . . logy gene- 
 
 Deontolog^y treats of the perfectibihty of beings in laUnd 
 
 ,.,.,..,,. special. 
 
 general ; Special Deontology, which is divided into 
 several sciences, of the perfection possible for each 
 species of beings. 
 
 A. General Deontology. 
 
 191. 
 
 Beings may be considered in the great unity General 
 which they form through their mutual relations of logy" °" 
 perfection. If these relations are classified ac- classes of 
 cording to the categories, they will fall into three of peXc- 
 great classes : (i) relations of perfection p7''oper to '°"" 
 moral beings ; (2) relations of pei feet ion proper to 
 intelligent beings ; and (3) relations of perfection 
 proper to real beings, whether sensitive or extra-sub- 
 jective. We have said " relations proper to intel- 
 ligent beings " instead of "relations proper to ideal 
 beings," because ideal being is properly one and 
 simple ; hence, apart from intelligent subjects and 
 real beings, it has no intrinsic relations. 
 
 192. 
 
 The relations of perfection thus classified, if These 
 looked at as they exist in the Supreme Being, are are immu- 
 immutable ; but, if they are considered as they compiet'e 
 exist in contingent being, they are susceptible supieme
 
 35- 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Being. In 
 
 contingent 
 being they 
 ai-e more 
 or less 
 realized. 
 
 of various degrees of quantity and realization. 
 Their greater or less realization determines the 
 greater or less perfection of the beings between 
 which the relations in question exist. Hence, in 
 the Supreme Being there is complete and im- 
 mutable perfection, because therein all the relations 
 of perfection are immutably and completely realized. 
 Contingent being, on the other hand, is suscep- 
 tible of imperfection, and of greater or less 
 perfection, according to the higher or lower 
 realization of the relations mentioned. 
 
 Perfection 
 real, intel- 
 lectual, 
 and moral . 
 
 193- 
 
 If the relations proper to real, intelligent, and 
 moral beings are fully realized, they produce, 
 respectively, real, intellectual, and moral per- 
 fection. 
 
 The rela- 
 tions of 
 perfection 
 have a 
 double 
 exigence. 
 
 194. 
 
 These relations, upon whose realization the 
 perfection of a being depends, have, therefore, 
 objectively considered, one exigence in them- 
 selves, and, subjectively considered, another exi- 
 gence in view of the beings that are subjects 
 of perfection or imperfection. 
 
 The Italian word esigejiza I have been obliged to 
 render by its etymological equivalent exigence, for the 
 reason that in English there is no word that exactly cor- 
 responds to it. Exigence, it is true, is hardly used in the 
 sense here implied ; but its meaning is clear enough from 
 the context.
 
 EXIGENCE, OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE. 353 
 
 195. 
 By objective existence is meant that which the Objective 
 
 ^ exigence. 
 
 mind conceives, when it considers being in itself, 
 without attending to its relation to any particular 
 real subject. 
 
 196. 
 Subjective exig^ence is that which the mind Subjective 
 
 -' ^ exigence. 
 
 conceives in the particular real subject, when it 
 observes that the perfection of it requires the 
 realization of a given relation. 
 
 197. 
 
 The word " exigence " expresses the necessity Meaning 
 which belongs to the conditions necessary for the gence." 
 attainment of an end, and which derives its cha- 
 racter from that end. 
 
 198. 
 Now, there is a real or physical necessity, and ^He exi- 
 
 "^ gences, or 
 
 this is the exirence in virtue of which the relations necessities, 
 
 _ _ in virtue of 
 
 peculiar to real beino;s peremptorily demand which the 
 
 ,,,..,. rehxtions 
 
 realization, in order that real or physical bemgs peculiar to 
 
 , . the various 
 
 may attam their perfection. classes of 
 
 There is an intellectual necessity, and this is claim reai- 
 the exigence in virtue of which the relations 
 peculiar to intellective beings peremptorily de- 
 
 2 A
 
 354 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 mand realization, in order that they may attain 
 their perfection. 
 
 There is a moral necessity, and this is the 
 exigence in virtue of which the relations peculiar 
 to moral beings peremptorily demand realization, 
 in order that they may attain their perfection. 
 
 Physical, 
 intellec- 
 tual, and 
 moral ne- 
 cessities 
 have each 
 two forms, 
 an ontolo- 
 gical and 
 a deonto- 
 logical. 
 
 199. 
 
 These are the three deontological necessities. 
 They differ from ontological necessities in this, that 
 the former are necessary to the perfection of 
 beings, the latter to their existence. There is, 
 therefore, an ontological and a deontological phy- 
 sical necessity, an ontological and a deontological 
 intellectual necessity (in the former of which is 
 included logical necessity), and an ontological and 
 a deontological moral necessity. This distinction 
 is not found in God, because in Him, from the 
 excellency of His nature, the deontological necessity 
 is ontological. 
 
 200. 
 
 Perfection, 
 being a 
 form, may 
 be either 
 objective 
 or subjec- 
 tive (§35). 
 
 But, since perfection is a form, and there are 
 as we have seen, subjective forms and objective 
 forms, there are also subjective perfections and 
 objective perfections.
 
 PERFECTING FORMS. 355 
 
 201, 
 
 Moreover, some subjective forms have a The form 
 
 1 • r 1 • I'll • r which pcr- 
 
 reality distmct from the subject which they mform ; fects real 
 others are only a constituent element of the in- subjective, 
 formed subject itself Now, the same distinction either a 
 must be made respecting the perfections of beings, tuent eie- 
 In fact, ail real beings have one perfection which that being 
 belongs altogether to themselves, and another [J^ct 
 which they receive from their interaction, and ^^^ '^^' 
 which corresponds to their nature. From this 
 union and interaction springs, in all cases, the 
 perfection of composite beings. 
 
 202. 
 As the form which causes intelligences to exist The form 
 
 ^ which per 
 
 is an object, so also the form which perfects them fects in- 
 
 . ^ telligent 
 
 IS objective. . beings is 
 
 ;ent 
 js is 
 objective. 
 
 203. 
 
 But the form which perfects moral beings. The form 
 that is, beings endowed with will and rational fects moral 
 
 bein^^s is 
 
 affection, is subjective-objective, for the reason that subjective- 
 the perfection of the will consists in loving all 
 beings, the totality of being, and distributing this 
 affection according to the nature of the object, or, 
 which is the same thing, according to the quan- 
 tum of entity which we find in it, when we 
 measure it by the essence of being, which mani- 
 fests itself to the mind, and which is at once the
 
 356 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 object of the mind and the tmiversal measure. 
 Intuited being measures all particular beings, and 
 the will feels the exigence wherein they claim to 
 be recognized as what they are. The will must 
 not oppose itself to the understanding, but must 
 accept the truth cognized by it. All beings are, 
 by nature, goods for the will ; they are naturally 
 lovable to it. But the wnll, being free, may place 
 itself in opposition to this law of nature, and may 
 substitute false for true entities, as objects of its 
 love ; it may enhance or depreciate entities for 
 itself, and, hence, place its goods in opposition to 
 their true being. In so doing it contradicts the 
 truth, lies, makes war on entity, and is, therefore, 
 unrighteous ; it corrupts the natural law existing 
 between it and real beings — is, therefore, dis- 
 ordered and perverted. The internal lie, unright- 
 eousness, voluntary disorder, is moral evil ; the 
 opposite is moral good. 
 
 It is unnecessary to say that the word good is used here 
 in the sense of the Greek a-ya^op, that which completes or 
 perfects. KaAoJc aincjjijvavTO TajaOov, ov wavr i^Urai, says 
 Aristotle, in the opening of the Nikomacheian Ethics. 
 
 204. 
 What is Evil must be avoided, s^ood souofht. Obliza- 
 
 moral ob- ^ ^ <^ 
 
 ligation? tlou is ouly the concept of moral good and evil 
 manifesting to the soul its own necessity. Of all 
 goods, that which presents itself with the greatest 
 clearness and completeness to the mind is obedience
 
 MORAL PERFECTION. 357 
 
 to the Supreme Being; of all evils, disobedience 
 to the same. Truth and entity, therefore, are the 
 first spring and the first proclaimer of obligation. 
 Beings, in relation to the will, have moral exigence. 
 
 205. 
 
 Moral exigence or necessity is, therefore, widely Difference 
 different from that exigence which the relations moral per- 
 of perfection peculiar to real and intellectual that of 
 beings carry with them, inasmuch as the perfection inteiiec- 
 of these latter is not the perfection of a will, bdngs. 
 Moral perfection, on the contrary, is the perfection 
 of a will, and is effected by will. 
 
 206. 
 
 Now, will is the essence of personality, and second 
 person alone is the true cause of actions, and the 
 one to which alone they can be imputed. Although, 
 therefore, real being may be more or less perfect, 
 still, this perfection is not imputed to real being, 
 which is its subject and not its cause, but is 
 merely contemplated by the intellect as a per- 
 fection of that being. The same may be said 
 with respect to the perfections of intellectual being. 
 They are perfections of nature, and not of person. 
 
 207. 
 
 Hence, in connection with the perfection of Third 
 real and intellectual beings, there is but one
 
 358 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L S YS TEM. 
 
 exigence, which says, " In order that real or 
 intellectual beings may be perfect, they must be 
 so or so." On the contrary, the perfection of 
 moral being brings with it two exigences. The 
 one springs from being, considered in itself, and 
 says, " Entity, truth, must be recognized by the 
 will." The other arises from the nature of the 
 will itself, and says, "If the will does not recognize 
 entity and truth, it has not perfection." The first 
 is the obligation imposed upon the person by the 
 exigence of the beings known to it (objective 
 exigence) ; the second is the exigence of the will 
 itself, considered as a nature susceptible of per- 
 fection (subjective exigence). 
 
 Three 
 parts of 
 the doc- 
 trine of the 
 perception 
 of being. 
 
 208. 
 
 The doctrine of the perfection of beings may 
 be divided into three parts. The first describes 
 the a7%hetype of every being, that is, the condition 
 of the being that has reached its highest per- 
 fection. The second describes the actions whereby 
 the perfections of beings may be produced. The 
 third describes the means whereby the art of per- 
 forming these actions may be acquired. 
 
 Nature of 
 the object 
 of each of 
 these 
 parts. 
 
 209. 
 
 The archetype of being, or ideal perfection, is 
 the example and guide of all the arts ; the actions, 
 whereby the perfections of beings are produced, 
 include all the arts, mechanical, liberal, intellectual,
 
 SPECIAL DEONTOLOGY. 359 
 
 moral ; the 7neans, which lead to these arts, con- 
 stitute special education, or the school of these 
 arts. 
 
 B. Special Deontology. 
 
 210. 
 
 This shows the vast extent of Genet'al Deon-^sisiness 
 tology. Special Deontology is vaster still, since Deonto-^ 
 there is one for every kind of being, and not only °^" 
 for natural, but also for artificial beings. And 
 among those whose author is man, one of the 
 first places belongs to those whose aim is to pro- 
 duce beautiful objects. Each of the fine arts has 
 its own science, and all these sciences presuppose 
 a science of the beautiful in general. This science 
 we may term Callology. A special division of it, 
 that which treats of the beautiful as seen in the 
 sensible, we call ^Esthetics. But Callology and 
 -Esthetics belong, first of all, to General Deon- 
 tology, and especially to that part of it which 
 describes the archetypes of beings. 
 
 Rosmini has left no special treatise on Callology or 
 Esthetics ; but his various utterances upon these subjects, 
 scattered through his different works, have been collected 
 in two volumes under the title of Liter atiu'c and the Fine 
 Arts. According to his view, beauty is a relation of which 
 the principle is a mind and the term an object. It is, 
 therefore, like truth, an objective relation, not a subjective 
 one, like the good. We may, therefore, say that the true 
 and the beautiful are attributes of objects, while the good 
 is an attribute of subjects. The beautiful, however, differs 
 from the true, implying, besides truth, four other elements —
 
 36o PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 unity, multitude, totality, and mental applause. Of this 
 mental applause Rosmini says, " Approval or applause is, 
 therefore, a natural affection excited in the intelligent 
 subject at the sight of the identity discovered to exist 
 between two terms, which the mind compares and which 
 seem most different : these are the theme or idea, and 
 the work actually executed or accomplished" {TJicosophy, 
 vol. ii. § 1 135). "The beautiful most proper to human 
 nature is that which is found realized in the world, because 
 man himself is made up of an animated body and an 
 intellective soul, and the latter, by nature, intuites only the 
 idea of being, which is the tmiversal theme, the most virtual 
 of all and not yet beauty. The works executed in accord- 
 ance with this theme man must gather from his own modi- 
 fications, that is, from the finite terms of feeling. The only 
 real accessible to man being the finite, he must draw from 
 it the real and effectual spur of his actions, as well as 
 his determinate ideas, and, therefore, also the archetype of 
 that beauty upon which he can spend his admiration. . . . 
 But he demands the divine real" {Ibid. § 1139). When 
 beauty goes beyond the measure of human imagination, it 
 becomes sublimity, and the action it then arouses in the 
 human soul is no longer applause, but entluisiasin. It is 
 interesting to compare these views with those of Plato, 
 Aristotle, Plotinus, and Plutarch. See Plato, Phaidros, 
 pp. 245 sqq., 250 sqq. ; Aristotle, Poetics, cap. iv. 1448 b, 
 15 sqq.; Rhetoric, i. 11 ; 1371 b, 5 sqq.; Plotinus, Enneads, 
 i. 6; Plutarch, Iltoc Stt tov viov TroiviuaTwv ukovsiv 
 cap. iii. pp. 17, 18. Rosmini's whole doctrine of beauty very 
 closely resembles that of Plotinus, down even to the view 
 that the subject or principle of beauty is determined by its 
 object : " To yap opwv irpoQ to opMjuevov avyyevlg Koi o/xoiov 
 Troir\(jdfXivov Sa £7rt/3aXAftv Ty Oia. Ov yap civ TrwTTore tl^tv 
 6(l)daXfiOQ TjXtov TjXioucrig fxi) ysyfvr^pivog, ovdi to kuXov av 
 'icoi ^pv^i) /uri KoXr) ytvofxivi]. ytviaOw Stj ttjowtov Oeotidiig irag, 
 £/ fiiXXei OeaauaOai Otov n Kni KaXov " {Enneads, i. 6, 9). 
 Goethe's paraphrase of this passage will occur to every 
 one : 
 
 " War* nicht das Augc snnnenhaft, 
 Wie konnten wir das Licht erblicken ?
 
 MORAL PERFECTION. 361 
 
 Lebt' nicht in uns der Gottheit eig'ne Kraft, 
 Wie konnte uns die gottliche entzUcken ? " 
 
 Rosmini so thoroughly believed in the power of the object 
 to form the subject that, in his earlier life, he surrounded 
 himself with numerous objects of art. In his palace at 
 Rovereto there are still some twenty thousand engravings, 
 many of which he collected. Rosmini's theory of the 
 beautiful is worked out at length in the second volume of 
 his TheosopJiy, book iii. § 4, cap. 10. It is practically summed 
 up in the beautiful lines of Michael Angelo : — 
 
 " Amore e un concetto di bellezza 
 Immaginata, cui sta dentro al core, 
 Arnica di virtute e gentilezza." 
 
 Cf. Dante's "Amor e cor gentil sono una cosa" {Vita 
 Nuova, § 20). 
 
 211. 
 
 We will not stop here to classify all the special Human 
 
 Deonto- 
 
 deontological sciences, but will limit our discourse logy. 
 to Human Deontology, i.e. the science of human 
 perfection. 
 
 212. 
 
 Man is a being real, intellectual and moral. The doc- 
 and, therefore, shares in the perfection proper to moral per- 
 the three modes of being. Since, however, moral hiipSiy 
 perfection completes the other two, and alone is the whole 
 personal perfection, for that reason the doctrine oMn'man 
 of 7no7'al perfection implicitly contains the whole P'^^"^'^^''''"' 
 doctrine of human perfection.
 
 362 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Doctrine 
 of human 
 perfection 
 embraces 
 three parts 
 — air he- 
 type, 
 actions, 
 means. 
 
 (a)Teletics. 
 (j8) Ethics. 
 
 (7) As- 
 cetics. 
 
 (S) Edu- 
 cation. 
 
 (e) Eco- 
 nomy. 
 
 (7)Politics. 
 
 {{) Cosmo- 
 politics. 
 
 213. 
 
 The doctrine of human perfection presents to 
 the mind those same three parts into which we 
 have said that general deontology is divided: (i) 
 the doctrine of the human archetype, to which 
 every man must seek to approximate ; (2) the 
 doctrine of those actions whereby man approxi- 
 mates and conforms to that archetype ; and (3) the 
 doctrine of the mea7is and aids by which man is 
 stimulated and strengthened to these actions. 
 The first of these doctrines may be called Teletics, 
 the second Ethics, and the third, that is, the 
 doctrine of means, is divided into several sciences. 
 A man may acquire these means and apply them 
 to himself: the science of this may be called 
 Ascetics. Or he may apply them to his fellow- 
 men, encouraging and aiding them to acquire 
 human perfection : the science which teaches the 
 manner of this application is called Education or 
 Pcsdagogics. The science which teaches how to 
 apply them to the family, so that it, being rendered 
 good, may exert itself to render good the indi- 
 viduals that compose it, may be called Econoiny ; 
 that which teaches how to apply it to civil society, 
 so that it, being rendered good, may improve its 
 members, is termed Politics ; and, finally, that 
 which teaches how to apply them to the theocratic 
 community of the human race may be called 
 Cosmopolitics,
 
 THE ARCHETYPAL MAN. 363 
 
 214. 
 
 The science which describes the perfect arche- (a) Teie- 
 
 ^ 1 , 1 . , tics. The 
 
 typal man has not been written or even attempted, archetype 
 and it cannot be worked out until all the sciences bothln'the 
 relating to man are fully developed. And even "nci'super- 
 then the science would not be complete. The "Serf is 
 truth is, that man is at present fallen, and that he ^^^l^^ 
 was never left in a state of mere nature. Nor 
 was it fitting that he should be so left. Hence 
 his nature has always been mixed up with the 
 divine and supernatural, and what man may- 
 become in the double order of the natural and 
 supernatural is a problem that surpasses and 
 eludes human thought, and, therefore, can never 
 be completely solved by human philosophy. But, 
 instead of having this archetype described in 
 words and consigned to the dead letter of a book, 
 we have the living archetype presented to us by- 
 God Himself in Jesus Christ, the Head and Lord 
 of the human race. 
 
 215. 
 
 Man must be good and not evil. The good- (/3) Ethks. 
 ness of man consists in the goodness of his will, 
 since it is clear that he who has a will perfectly- 
 good is a good man. Now, the goodness of man, 
 and not the goodness of his belongings, is called 
 moral goodness, and that quality of the human will 
 whereby a man is good is called moral goodness or
 
 364 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 vh'tue. This good forms the subject of Ethics, 
 which is therefore the science of virtue. 
 
 This is exactly Aristotle's doctrine : " Ilavrac \iraivov\jiiv 
 KOI xpiyo/xtv slg rriv rrpoaipacnv (iXiirovTeg fxaXXov ^ elg to, 
 fpya" {Eth. Ettd., ii. 11 ; 1228 a, 12 sqq.). 
 
 Ethics 
 includes 
 three parts 
 corre- 
 sponding 
 to its three 
 offices. 
 
 {a) Gene- 
 ral Ethics. 
 
 (b) Special 
 Ethics. 
 
 (<r) Eudse- 
 monology. 
 
 216. 
 
 The moral philosopher does three things : (i) 
 he analyzes the concept of virtue, distinguishing 
 its elements, and then gathers them all up into a 
 scientific definition ; (2) he tries to ascertain in 
 what mode, that is, by what voluntary and free 
 acts, and by what habits, a man may attain to 
 virtue, and, on the contrary, in what mode and by 
 what actions he loses it and becomes wicked ; and 
 (3) he endeavours to estimate the excellence and 
 preciousness of virtue, without which all other 
 goods are valueless to man. Hence Ethics has 
 three parts : the first treats of the nature of virtue, 
 and is denominated General Ethics, because it 
 does not descend to any of those special habits or 
 acts into which virtue enters, but deals with that 
 condition which all habits and acts must possess 
 in order to be virtuous ; the second treats of the 
 modes of virtue, and is called Special Ethics, 
 because it considers the special habits and acts 
 which contain virtue ; the third treats of the 
 excellence of virtue, and is called Ethical EudcB- 
 vionology, because we discover the excellence of 
 virtue only by seeing how it renders the intelli- 
 gent and volitional nature perfect and happy.
 
 NO MO LOGY. 365 
 
 Rosmini has left three important works on Ethics : (i) 
 A Treatise on the Moral Consciousness ; (2) Principles of 
 Moral Science; and (3) A Comparative and Critical 
 History of the Systems which have been propounded with 
 regard to the Principle of Morality. These are all very- 
 remarkable works, and the last is the most exhaustive 
 treatise on the subject in existence. 
 
 217, 
 The first part of Ethics, then, having to treat {a) Gene- 
 
 , , . . .. 1-1 ^^^ Ethics 
 
 of Virtue, investigates its elements, which are treats of 
 three : (i) will and liberty ; (2) law ; (3) conformity of virtue. 
 of liberty and will to law. In treating of will, mentof" 
 Ethics makes use of that part of Anthropology or goo'd is the 
 Psychology which considers the power of the will ^^^^* 
 over the other faculties of man, the limits of this 
 power and of the liberty which renders it the 
 responsible cause of actions. 
 
 Speaking of law (Nomology), it first defines Second 
 it in the largest sense as tho. principle of obligatioit. of "Sue 
 It then inquires what is the first of all laws ; that 
 is, it seeks for the first principle of obligation, 
 couched in a formula logically prior to all others, a 
 formula expressing the essence of obligation itself 
 in the first act in which it reveals itself to man, 
 and not requiring any ulterior ground to account 
 for it. And, inasmuch as the light of human 
 reason and will is being, it is plain that the first 
 self-evident formula of obligation is : — Follow the 
 light of reason, or, Recognize being. To cognize 
 is an act of the reason, and always belongs to the 
 theoretic order ; to recognize is often the corre-
 
 366 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Spending act of the will, and belongs to the 
 practical order. But being has in itself an 
 intrinsic order, according to which certain beings 
 are greater and more excellent than others and 
 have greater dignity. This order is what must be 
 recognized by the will, and, hence, the universal 
 formula of obligation, the principle of Ethics, may 
 be expressed thus : Recognize being as it is in its 
 order. 
 
 It will be observed that Rosmini does not allow to man 
 any special moral faculty, whose function is to cognize and 
 adhere to the good. In this he differs from both Aristotle 
 and Kant. Both these thinkers endow man with a practical 
 reason (^paKxiKoq vovq, praktische Vernunfi), though by that 
 term they mean very different things. As to Aristotle's 
 meaning, see Walter, Die Lehre vo7i der prakt. Verminft 
 in der griech. Philosophie, and the severe, but just, criticism 
 of it by Teichmiiller, in his Neiie Studies zur Gesch. der 
 Begriffe, Heft. iii. In reference to Kant's view, Rosmini 
 says, " Man is a cognitive and active being ; hence human 
 life is naturally divided into theoretical and practical. The 
 same cannot properly be said of Philosophy. Philosophy 
 is not an action, but always a contemplation, whatever its 
 subject be. . . . We will not, therefore, divide philosophy 
 into theoretical and practical, as has been done heretofore ; 
 but we will set out with two theories, the one of which is 
 destined to show us how beings are and how they act, the 
 other to instruct us how we ourselves ought to act. . . . 
 These two great branches of philosophy have no formal 
 difference, that is, no difference in regard to their mode of 
 being, such as exists between contemplation and action. 
 Both are contemplative, and . -. . differ only in the objects 
 of their contemplation. Nor is the contemplative faculty 
 different in the two cases, as was maintained by Kant, who 
 made the Theoretic Reason and the Practical Reason two 
 distinct faculties. It is one and the same faculty applied
 
 PRACTICAL REASON. 367 
 
 to different materials. What, then, is the principle 
 according to which philosophy is divided into the two 
 theories indicated ? . . . Things may be considered . . . 
 either simply as they are or as they ought to be. This 
 would seem the first and most obvious division of philo- 
 sophy ; yet it is not the one we are in search of. What 
 we call the Theory of Practice does not go so far as to 
 determine how all things ought to be, but only how the 
 actions of men ought to be " (Introduction to Pri7iciples of 
 Moral Science'). 
 
 218. 
 In the act of practical recognition we form an What part 
 
 r -y ' • • 1 --T^i . of human 
 
 estimate 01 bemg proportionate to its grade. 1 his action is 
 estimate is followed by an equal degree of love, itself, and 
 which also diffuses itself on all beings in degrees pardcipa- 
 proportionate to their grade of being. This love 
 again is succeeded, either with or without express 
 decrees of the will, by external actions ordered in 
 conformity with that love and rendering the whole 
 life of the virtuous man beautiful and harmonious. 
 
 219. 
 But among beings, God is absolute beginning a man is 
 
 . . . ,_,, *" not com- 
 
 and end of all. He is, therefore, the final aim 01 pieteiyvir- 
 
 , . ,,,,,-, , - , . tuous until 
 
 the virtuous man s will and 01 its acts, the final aim he refers 
 to which tend all recognition, all estimation, all acdon to 
 love, all human action. Hence comes Religion, ultimate 
 in which, as being morality perfected and raised '^™" 
 to the highest degree of completeness, every duty 
 becomes sacred and every virtue holiness. Since 
 then all beings proceed from God through creation,
 
 368 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 and are dependent on Him for preservation, so 
 they must all be led back to Him, and all con- 
 formed to the divine will. 
 
 God's will 
 is the 
 source of 
 divine 
 positive 
 law. 
 
 2 20. 
 
 And the will of God becomes the source of 
 positive legislation, that is, of those laws which 
 are positively revealed by God to man. Ethics 
 points out the difference between the natural and 
 the positive law, and shows that respect for the 
 latter proceeds from respect for the former. 
 
 ^\^ly there 
 
 are duties 
 
 toward 
 
 human 
 
 nature, 
 
 which is 
 
 contingent 
 
 and 
 
 limited. 
 
 221. 
 
 Next to our duties to God come our duties to 
 created intelligences, the duties which each man 
 has toward his fellows. Although these are sub- 
 ordinate to our duties toward God, as created 
 things are subordinate to the Creator; yet men 
 •also are objects of moral duties, as beings who are 
 aims in themselves. And their existence has an 
 aim, because they are intelligent, and in intelligence 
 is ideal being, which is a divine element. In fact, 
 the will, which is the active faculty of the intelli- 
 gence, must have, as its end and good, something 
 infinite and divine. Hence the aphorism : The 
 moral always embraces in some way the totality 
 of being.
 
 LOGIC AND ETHICS. 369 
 
 222. 
 
 Developing the second element of moral good, Special 
 viz, law, Ethics teaches how to apply it to special Ethics. 
 cases. Hence arises the Special Logic of Ethics, 
 which deals chiefly with the moral consciousness. 
 In it rules are given for the application of the 
 laws to particular actions, and especially to cases 
 in which the law is doubtful. The principal law 
 to be applied in these cases is the following : — " If 
 there is doubt respecting the existence of the 
 positive law, and the doubt cannot be resolved, 
 the law is not binding ; and if there is doubt 
 in a matter appertaining to the natural law and 
 relating to an evil inherent in action, the risk of 
 this evil must be avoided." 
 
 This law was the source of a long controversy between 
 Rosmini and the Jesuits, who have their OAvn views in 
 regard to obligation toward a doubtful law. See Biblio- 
 graphy of Rosmini's Works, Class iii. 
 
 223. 
 
 Coming at last to the third element, that is, to Third 
 
 , , . 1 -11 11 T- 1 • element of 
 
 the relation between will and law, Ethics sets moral 
 
 11 1 1 • 1 • 1 1 • 1 • good is the 
 
 forth all the modes in which this relation may relation 
 vary, describing the various states, good and bad, win and 
 into which human will and liberty enter, and man 
 
 himself as affected by such variations. 
 
 2 B
 
 370 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 {h) Special 
 Ethics. 
 Treats of 
 the special 
 forms of 
 moral 
 good and 
 evil. 
 
 224. 
 
 The second part of Ethics, or Special Ethics, 
 treats of the special forms of moral good and evil, 
 and begins by distinguishing between act and 
 Jiabit \}1,iq\, showing the various forms of morality 
 of which each is susceptible. It then goes on to 
 set forth our special deities to divinity and humanity. 
 As regards the latter, a man must respect and 
 honour human nature in himself and in his fellows; 
 he must respect it in individuals and in the 
 societies, natural or artificial, in which men unite 
 themselves. All social relations give occasion to 
 the existence of moral duties. Next, it treats of 
 habits, and so of all the special virtties and vices. 
 Furthermore, it considers the means by which 
 evil may be avoided and moral good attained. 
 To this part of Ethics, as we have seen, the name 
 of Ascetics may be given. 
 
 EudKmo- 
 nology 
 shows the 
 beauty of 
 moral 
 good and 
 the turpi- 
 tude of 
 moral evil 
 in them- 
 selves and 
 in their 
 effects. 
 
 225. 
 
 Eudsemonology, the third part of Ethics, con- 
 siders the excellence of moral good and the tur- 
 pitude of moral evil. It shows that both are 
 infinite. It describes the dignity and joy of 
 the virtuous soul, and the ignobleness and misery 
 of the vicious soul. It shows that no truly 
 virtuous man is unhappy, and no wicked one 
 happy. It thus wakes the confidence and trust 
 which slumber in the human heart, that virtue 
 will meet with an eternal reward, and vice with
 
 RATIONAL RIGHT. 371 
 
 an eternal punishment. It proves this from the 
 divine attributes. The wise philosopher, after 
 having, as a pedagogue, led man thus far, consigns 
 him to the hands of a more sublime teacher — 
 Revelation. 
 
 226. 
 
 From Ethics proceeds the very extensive Rational 
 science of Rational Right. It arises from the "^ 
 protection which Ethics, or the moral law, affords 
 to the useful good, or, more generally, to all the 
 eudsemonologic goods which man can enjoy. In 
 fact, it Is one of man's ethical duties that he shall 
 not injure his neighbour. This the Roman lawyers 
 expressed by their formula Neminem Icedere. No 
 one, therefore, may interfere with the good pos- 
 sessed by his neighbour. Now, a man who has a 
 good which. In virtue of the moral law, must not 
 be interfered with by any one, is said to have a 
 right. If the man, possessing this right, had not 
 the power to make it useful to himself. It would 
 no longer be either a good, the object of right, 
 or a ris^ht Itself Rioht, therefore, considered 
 subjectively — that is, in relation to the subject 
 possessing It — Is an eudsemonologlcal faculty, pro- 
 tected by the moral law. From being thus 
 protected by the moral law, this eudaemonological 
 good acquires a certain moral dignity, and he who 
 possesses It acquires the power to protect it 
 against any one who would take It from him or 
 depreciate It.
 
 372 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L SYS TEM. 
 
 Rosmini has left a very voluminous treatise on the 
 Philosophy of Right, which, though it contains many anti- 
 quated notions, is still well worth a careful reading. 
 
 Sphere 
 of the 
 science of 
 right. 
 
 227. 
 
 The Science of Right undertakes (i) to classify 
 all those goods which may be the object or 
 material of right ; (2) to determine what pro- 
 tection the moral law accords to them, and how far 
 and under what conditions it may be extended ; 
 
 (3) to decide the doubtful ones, that is, those 
 which arise from the apparent collision of rights ; 
 
 (4) to determine in how far the defence extended 
 to rights is sanctioned by the moral law itself, and 
 under what circumstances and conditions it is 
 legitimate ; and (5) to settle the satisfaction and 
 damages due for violated rights, and, hence, for 
 losses and injuries. 
 
 Funda- 
 mental 
 division of 
 a man's 
 rights in 
 relation 
 to other 
 men. 
 
 228. 
 
 All the goods and rights which a man pos- 
 sesses in his relations with his fellow-men come 
 under two forms, which constitute the basis of 
 the fundamental classification of these rio-hts 
 themselves — -freedom and property. 
 
 What is 
 freedom f 
 
 229. 
 
 F^^eedom is the power which each man has to 
 use all his faculties and resources, so long as he
 
 FREEDOM AND PROPERTY. 373 
 
 does not thereby encroach upon the rights of 
 others, that is, so long as he does not interfere 
 with the goods of his fellow-men. 
 
 Aristotle defines the free man as the man who exists 
 for his own sake and not for the sake of others ( " iXevOepog 
 avBfuorrog 6 avrov evEKa Kat jur} aXXov wv." Metaphys. i. 2 ; 
 982 a, 26). Hegel says, " The existence of free will is 
 Right " {Philosophie des Rechts, Einleitung, § 29). By 
 existence {Daseyn), Hegel means " being with a determina- 
 tion, which, as an immediate and being {i.e. existing) de 
 termination, is — quality " {Encyclop.^ pt. i. § 90). 
 
 230. 
 
 Propei'ty is the union of goods with man. what is 
 This union is based upon a psychological law, in ' ' 
 virtue of which a man may unite to himself things 
 different from himself, in somewhat the same way 
 as his body is united to his soul. This permanent 
 union takes place through feeling and intelligence. 
 Through feeling even the lower animals unite 
 external things to them — their young, the food 
 they collect, their nests, habitations, and other 
 things, which they sometimes defend even with 
 their lives. Thus they have a certain property, 
 but not a moral or legal one. Man unites things 
 to himself both by the natural bond of feeling, 
 and also by the bond which intelligence adds to 
 the other, a bond in virtue of which he lays claim 
 to many external things, and reserves them for 
 future use. This also is a kind of property, but 
 not that property which constitutes a right. 
 When, however, the bonds of feding and intclli-
 
 374 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 gence are supplemented by the moral bond, then 
 property is converted into right. Now, this bond 
 consists, as we have said, in the protection which 
 the moral law accords to the other two bonds, by 
 imposing upon other men the obligation to respect 
 them. Moral reason imposes this obligation when 
 the first two bonds between men and things have 
 been formed through lawful liberty, that is, with- 
 out separating the things appropriated from other 
 men to whom they may have been united. The 
 origin of this obligation is this. To separate 
 from a man that which he has united to him by 
 affection and intelligence is to cause him pain, to 
 do him evil. But we may not do evil to others in 
 order to do good to ourselves. Therefore, moral 
 reason forbids us to injure the property of others. 
 
 Two parts 
 of the 
 science of 
 right. 
 
 231. 
 
 The subject of rights may be either the indi- 
 vidual 7nan, considered in relation to his fellow- 
 men, or the social man. Hence the science of 
 right has two parts, individual rigid and social 
 ric'/it. 
 
 232. 
 
 Subject of Individual Ripfht treats of three thinofs : (i) 
 
 Individual *=* . , . 
 
 Right. of natural and acquired rights, describing their 
 
 nature and conditions, their titles and modes of 
 acquisition ; (2) of the transmission of rights and 
 the modifications which they undergo in this
 
 SOCIAL RIGHT. 375 
 
 transmission ; (3) of the changes which take place 
 in the rights of others, and of the obhgations and 
 modifications of .reciprocal rights which follow 
 therefrom. 
 
 233- 
 Social Right has its orio^in in Individual Rig^ht. Social 
 
 a =» ^ _ ° Right 
 
 It sprin2:s from the fact of association, and the free- leased on 
 
 ^ ^ . , . Individual 
 
 dom to form honourable associations is the natural Right. 
 right of every individual. It is limited only by 
 the principle that a new association must not 
 interfere with an old one already in possession. 
 
 234- 
 Social Right is universal ox partiaUar. ^f'^i 
 
 universal 
 
 or par- 
 ticular. 
 
 235- 
 
 Universal Social Right considers the duties Universal 
 
 , . ... Social 
 
 and rights which have their origin in the fact of Right is 
 
 11 rr^-L . . , . f. 1 • 1 either 
 
 association generally. 1 his right is of two kinds, internal or 
 internal and external. The first regards those 
 rights and duties that exist between the members 
 of any society ; the second, those that exist 
 between one society and another, or between a 
 society and individuals outside of it.
 
 376 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Internal 
 Right is 
 divided 
 into 
 
 Signorial, 
 Political, 
 and Com- 
 munal 
 Right. 
 
 236. 
 
 Internal Right naturally divides itself into 
 three parts, which treat respectively of (i) Sig- 
 7wj'ial Right as connected with governing right ; 
 (2) Political, or governing, Right, that is, the rights 
 and obligations of those who govern a society and 
 administer its affairs ; and {3) Cojntnunal Right, or 
 the rights and obligations common to all the 
 members of a society. 
 
 Particular 
 Social 
 Right 
 arises from 
 the appli- 
 cation to 
 particular 
 societies 
 of the 
 principles 
 of uni- 
 versal 
 social 
 right. 
 Three 
 societies 
 necessary 
 to the 
 human 
 race. 
 
 237- 
 
 This same division applies to Particular Social 
 Right, since these three kinds of rights and obli- 
 gations belong to every society. And there may 
 be innumerable societies, each of which has its 
 own right, resulting from an application of the 
 principles set forth in Universal Social Right ; 
 but there are three societies necessary for the 
 existence and organization of the human race, 
 societies which, when perfected, must restore the 
 human race to its primitive unity and render it 
 one great, well-ordered family. These societies 
 are — (i) the Theocratic, or natural-divine; {2) the 
 Domestic, which is based on human nature alone, 
 and divides itself into the Coiijtigal and the 
 Parental ; and (3) the Civil, which Is artificial, 
 indeed, but necessary for the well-being of the 
 human species. The particular rights belonging 
 to these three societies furnish subjects for three 
 treatises of the highest importance.* 
 
 * Cf. the first chapters uf Aristotle's rolitks.
 
 THEOCRATIC, DOMESTIC, AND CIVIL RIGHT. 377 
 
 238. 
 
 Theocratic Society is either i7iitiaL binding Theocratic 
 men tog^ether throuo-h natural moraHtv and natural either 
 
 , ^ ^ ^ ^ _ •' initial or 
 
 religion, or perfect, appearing in the form of the perfect. 
 Catholic Church, and binding men more closely 
 together by the positive bonds of a revealed, 
 supernatural morality and religion. Here also 
 there are three forms of right — Signorial, Govern- 
 mental, and Communal. 
 
 239- 
 Domestic Ricrht is, as we have said, twofold, Domestic 
 
 Right 
 
 Conjugal and Paj^ental. The former treats of the twofold, 
 
 Conjugal 
 
 relations between husband and wife, the nature and 
 and conditions of matrimony, and the mode of 
 contracting it, as well as of the rights and obliga- 
 tions of the contracting parties. The latter deals 
 with the reciprocal rights and corresponding obli- 
 gations oi parents and children, with special regard 
 to their moral bearings. 
 
 240, 
 
 Civil Right sets forth the nature and origin There 
 of civil society, and, hence, of its three parts, i^-cz/^ra/ as 
 
 J J J . ..... . . well as a 
 
 lordship, government, and citizejis/np, assigning sp^iai 
 to each its rights and obligations. Inasmuch d7.ii 
 
 . ... , , ... . soiiety, 
 
 as civil society may be constituted in various 
 forms and furnished with various organs and
 
 378 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 functions, there may be formed a general theory 
 of natural right for all civil societies, taking 
 account only of that which is essential and com- 
 mon to them all, and a theory of right for each 
 different form that the civil body may assume. 
 
 Rosmini attempted to define the limits of civil right in 
 his famous political pamphlet, Constitution according to 
 Social Justice. His Five Wounds of Holy Church had a 
 similar purpose. 
 
 The 
 
 supreme 
 problem 
 of the 
 Science of 
 Right. 
 
 241. 
 
 But a still higher question Is raised when it is 
 asked, Supposing a multitude, not yet organized 
 into a civil society, should commission a philo- 
 sopher to frame a constitution for them, what sort 
 of constitution ought he, having regard only to 
 principles of justice and leaving entirely out of 
 view all political considerations, give them ? Such 
 are the virtue and fertility of the principles of 
 justice, that if we should deduce from them their 
 natural consequences (to do which would certainly 
 require a master mind), these alone would supply 
 us with all the political laws even necessary for 
 the organization of a nation in such a way as to 
 give it the best chance of concord and prosperity. 
 And here comes in the connection between the 
 judicial and political sciences.
 
 ASCETICS AND PEDAGOGICS. 379 
 
 242. 
 
 Finally, External Right, whether universal or wherein 
 
 1 1 • • r • 1 • • 1 1 '^oi'isists 
 
 particular, is only an application of individual External 
 right to societies, considered as so many indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 Doctrine of Aleans. 
 
 243- 
 
 Ascetics cannot form a science apart from (7) As- 
 Ethics, for the reason that the subject of Ethics ' 
 is moral obligation and virtue, not merely in their 
 universal concepts, but also in their more special 
 acts. Hence, it is obvious that the means and 
 aids to virtue are matters of obligation, and that 
 the acquisition and proper use of them are vir- 
 tuous acts — acts to which certain virtues have 
 reference. 
 
 244. 
 Pedagogics treats of the art of human education. (5)^^«- 
 
 cation. 
 
 Man is educated partly by himself, partly by the 
 institution of the family, whose duties are some- 
 times in part assumed by special instructors co- 
 operating with the parents, partly by the influence 
 exercised upon him by the civil society in which 
 he is born, and partly by the influence of theocratic 
 society. Hence this science has many branches, 
 such as Self-Education^ Domestic Education, Pro-
 
 38o 
 
 PHIL OS or inc. \l sys tem. 
 
 fessional Education, Civil Educatio7i, and Ecclesi- 
 astical Education. These various branches of 
 Education must be supplemented by another 
 which has a very grand subject. We mean 
 Providential Education, that process whereby 
 God, ordering and disposing events, has educated, 
 and is still educating, the human race and the 
 individuals that compose it. 
 
 Rosmini has left an excellent work on Education, 
 entitled, On the Supreme Principle of Method and Some of 
 its Applications to the Purposes of Hicman Education. There 
 hardly exists a work which offers to the practical teacher 
 more valuable hints than this, or that would better repay 
 a careful study. One of its chief merits lies in the fact that 
 it devotes special attention to the order in which intelli- 
 gence, beginning with intuition and sensation, naturally 
 developes itself 
 
 Three 
 parts of 
 Education. 
 
 245- 
 
 Each of these branches naturally divides itself 
 into three parts, corresponding to the three parts 
 of man susceptible of education — the moral, the 
 intellectual, and the physical. 
 
 Physical 
 and intel- 
 lectual 
 must be 
 made sub- 
 ordinate to 
 moral edu- 
 cation. 
 
 246. 
 
 But the education of the individual must have 
 a perfect unity, and it is a great mistake to believe 
 that physical, intellectual, and moral education are 
 three separate and independent things. Hence 
 the first law of education is that of unity. The 
 human good to which education must tend is one
 
 EDUCATION AND ECONOMY. 381 
 
 and moral. Such is the end and aim. Intel- 
 lectual and physical education, therefore, must not 
 be sundered from moral education, but must be 
 given as means to it, so that no intellectual cog- 
 nition or gift and no bodily faculty may be 
 developed without being rendered subservient to 
 the end of moral perfection. All the efforts of 
 the educator and all the means he uses must, with 
 perfect coherence and consistency, contribute to 
 this end. Such is the principle of pedagogy. 
 
 247. 
 
 Economy treats of family government, shows (0 Eco- 
 Its constitution and the real — we might almost say, 
 mechanical — laws of its movement forward to, or 
 backward from, perfection — laws which have their 
 oriofin in its natural constitution. 
 
 248. 
 
 The family has certain elements essential to Conditions 
 its existence. Besides these, it has elements foTth'?'^^ 
 necessary to its prosperity, elements flowing from ofjii^^" 
 the same laws of which we have spoken. One of '^"" ^' 
 these is the following principle : — There must be 
 an equilibrium between the number of persons 
 who compose the family and its means of sub- 
 sistence.
 
 383 
 
 PHILOSOPHICA L SYS TEM. 
 
 The go- 
 vernment 
 of the 
 family 
 tends to 
 bring the 
 members 
 of a family 
 nearer the 
 aim of ex- 
 istence. 
 
 249. 
 
 Economy likewise sets forth the principles of 
 the art by which a family must be governed, in 
 order that it may prosper. And this prosperity 
 itself must be such as to bring the members of a 
 family nearer to human perfection and happiness. 
 
 Nature 
 and limits 
 of family 
 govern- 
 ments. 
 
 250. 
 
 The government of the family treated of in 
 Economy is that which is based on the use of 
 the means supplied by the domestic society, and 
 particularly by the power proper to family govern- 
 ment. 
 
 Vices be- 
 longing to 
 domestic 
 society. 
 
 251. 
 
 The governor, that is, the father, of the family 
 must look beyond the limits of the family itself, 
 and endeavour to form its members, so that they 
 may be in harmony with other domestic societies, 
 as well as with civil and theocratic society. One 
 of the vices of this society Is family egoism ; the 
 opposite vice Is individtialism. The family 
 affected with the former becomes quarrelsome, 
 and exposes Itself to the risk of strife, which may 
 either destroy It or place It In a position of 
 authority over others. The family affected with 
 the latter dissolves and perishes through internal 
 discord. Economy points out the characteristics
 
 POLITICS. 383 
 
 of such vices, and shows how the vices themselves 
 may be avoided. 
 
 It need hardly be remarked that the word Economy is 
 used here in its old, original sense of family government. 
 Aristotle says, " T|Ota nipn trig oiKovofxiKrig riv " {i.e. we have 
 seen that there are), " %v \i\v Sfo-TrorticTj . . . %v St irarpiKi], 
 Tp'iTov ^l yafxiKi]" {Polit. i. 12 ; 1259 a, ^ sq.). 
 
 252. 
 
 Pohtics is the science of the art of civil govern- (=r) Politics. 
 ment. A distinction must be made between 
 particulai'' political sciences and the Philosophy of 
 Politics. Each of the former treats of one of the 
 elements or means by which civil society is 
 governed ; the latter looks for the ultimate 
 grounds of the art. 
 
 Rosmini's work on The Philosophy of Politics, although 
 it contains elements not strictly philosophical, is, never- 
 theless, a work of great profundity and importance. It 
 consists of two parts, entitled respectively, The Main Canse 
 whereby Human Societies stand and fall, and Society and its 
 End. The latter is divided into four books, of which the 
 first treats of Society, the second of The End of Society, the 
 third of How the Proximate End of Civil Society, though 
 indeterminate iji Theory, is determined in Fact, and the 
 fourth of The Psychological Lazvs according to tvhich Civil 
 Societies approach their End or recede from it. The work 
 closes with four appendices, in the form of essays — the 
 first on Statistics, the second on Communism and Socialism, 
 the third on the Definition of Riches, and the fourth on 
 Public Amusements. The last two are particularly deserving 
 of attention.
 
 384 
 
 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Political 
 rules. 
 
 253. 
 
 The ultimate grounds are, in the first place, the 
 political rules; in other words, the highest precepts 
 which instruct us how to estimate the true value 
 of all the means and expedients to which the 
 statesman has recourse in the government of civil 
 society. 
 
 Four 
 sources of 
 political 
 rules. 
 
 254- 
 
 Political rules are divided into four classes, 
 which arise from considering civil society as a 
 body to be propelled to a given end. In con- 
 nection with this propulsion four elements must 
 be considered: (i) the end toward which said body 
 is to be impelled ; (2) the nature of the body 
 itself; (3) the laws of its movement; and (4) the 
 forces calculated to impel it. 
 
 The end of 
 
 civil 
 
 society. 
 
 First 
 Source, 
 
 255. 
 
 The philosophy of politics must first of all 
 consider the end toward which civil society must 
 continually move. This end is public prosperity, 
 which depends upon justice and the conco7'd of the 
 citizens. Hence the political rules deducible from 
 the end of civil society are these two : (i) Direct 
 your government so as to maintain and strengthen 
 that main force on which the existence of your 
 society rests, and, since this force changes accord- 
 ing to the different periods of the life of civil
 
 EQUILIBRIUMS OF CIVIL SOCIETY. 385 
 
 society, learn and follow the theory of these 
 changes ; in other words, Take care of the sub- 
 stance of society and leave the accidents to take 
 care of themselves; (2) Direct your government so 
 that your citizens may attain temporal prosperity 
 in accordance with the principles of morality, 
 or so that human prosperity may produce the 
 good proper to human nature, which alone satisfies 
 man. Citizens, when satisfied, are quiet and 
 harmonious. 
 
 256. 
 In the second place, the philosophy of politics Second 
 
 1 11- source. 
 
 must mvestigate the nature and natural constitu- 
 tion of civil society, and thence deduce this rule : 
 That policy which brings civil society near to its 
 natural and normal constitution is good ; that 
 which does the opposite is bad. The natural 
 constitution of civil society is based upon the 
 following five equilibriums : (i) equilibrium be- 
 tween population and wealth ; (2) equilibrium 
 between wealth and the civil power ; (3) equili- 
 brium between the civil power and material force ; 
 (4) equilibrium between the civil and military 
 powers and knowledge ; and (5) equilibrium be- 
 tween knowledge and virtue. The political rules 
 of this class may be summed up in this formula: 
 All those political means which bring civil society 
 nearer to the five equilibriums above enumerated 
 are good ; all those that do the opposite are bad. 
 
 2 c
 
 source. 
 
 586 PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 257- 
 
 Third In tlic third place, the philosophy of politics 
 
 must, through the study of history, seek to obtain 
 a knowledge of the laws according to which civil 
 societies move. This thought is clue to Giam- 
 battista Vico,* who merely indicated it, without 
 being able sufficiently to develop it, being unable 
 to devote to it that profound study of the trans- 
 formations undergone by all the peoples of the 
 earth, which is necessary in order to give it colour 
 and form. Hence arise political rules which may 
 be reduced to this formula : The political means 
 which harmonize with the laws of the natural 
 movement of civil society are good ; the others, 
 as being contrary to nature, are bad. 
 
 2^: 
 
 source. 
 
 Fourth In the fourth place, the philosophy of politics 
 
 must estimate the forces by which civil society is 
 impelled towards the good. To make this esti- 
 mate requires a good deal of sagacity and a great 
 power of abstraction, for the reason that there are 
 direct forces and indirect forces, and the latter, 
 though they produce the greatest effects, are just 
 those that escape attention. The rules deducible 
 from this source may be summed up in this 
 formula : The political means which, with the 
 
 * For an account of Vico, see The Philological Mtneum, vol. ii. 
 pp. 626-^44.
 
 CIVIL PHILOSOPHY AND COSMOPOLITICS. 387 
 
 smallest outlay of property and action, produce 
 the greatest amount of social good are the best. 
 
 259- 
 Having discovered the fundamental rules of The 
 
 ,. . , , , _ . . r 1 • Catholic 
 
 politics, which form the ultimate grounds of this rehgion is 
 
 1 • ^- • • / 7^ 7 • 7 7 ^^'^ most 
 
 art and constitute C ivil F/iilosopiiy, we must next powerful 
 
 ^ ^ ^ • 11 r political 
 
 apply them, that is, we must seek, by means 01 means, the 
 them, to estimate the respective values of all the tempers 
 political means supplied by the special political monizTs" 
 sciences. By doing so we arrive at this result : \^^^^ ^ 
 Religion, and especially Catholicism, is the most 
 valuable of political means, the one which tempers 
 and harmonizes all the rest. 
 
 Many will, doubtless, dissent, as the writer does, from 
 this last conclusion ; but it must be remembered that 
 Rosmini was, above all other things, a Christian and a 
 sincere Catholic. It must ever be a matter of regret that 
 so powerful a thinker never had a fair opportunity of 
 studying the action and effects of governments not in- 
 fluenced by Catholicism. 
 
 260. 
 
 Cosmopolitics is the theory of the government (0 Cosmo- 
 of theocratic society, that society in which alone '^'"''^'^* 
 the unity and organization of the human race 
 attain completeness.
 
 3iJ8 
 
 PHIL OSOPHICA L S ] 'S TE^T. 
 
 End and 
 fruit of 
 philo- 
 sophy. 
 
 261. 
 
 Philosophy continues all these investigations 
 until the human mind finds complete satisfaction 
 and repose. The mind finds repose when it has 
 succeeded in discoverinsf the ultimate ofrounds 
 accessible to it and is fully persuaded that these 
 are really and truly the last, and that it cannot go 
 beyond them. These ultimate grounds, then, when 
 found, satisfy the utmost needs of the human soul. 
 
 The true 
 philo- 
 sopher's 
 self-sur- 
 render to 
 God. 
 
 262. 
 
 Such is the outcome of philosophy. If the end 
 of philosophy is to find rest and repose for the 
 curiosity of the mind, its still more precious fruit 
 is, that it assures the human soul that all its 
 desires may yet be satisfied, removes from it all 
 uncertainty, and points out to it the safe way by 
 which it may reach the heights to which it tends. 
 This way leads it to God, to whom the consum- 
 mate philosopher yields himself up, to be instructed 
 as a pupil and perfected as a creature. 
 
 Philo- 
 
 sophy a 
 school of 
 humanity. 
 
 263. 
 
 Such is the end of philosophy ; such are 
 its fruits. But if, instead of considering philo- 
 sophy as a science, we look upon it as a school, 
 then it becomes the true education of the human
 
 THE END OF PHILOSOPHY. 389 
 
 spirit— oi the mind, which It conducts to a more 
 complete science, and of the heart, to whose 
 affections it reveals the perfect good. It was as 
 a school of humanity that philosophy was con- 
 ceived by Plato.
 
 LIST OF AUTHORS QUOTED OR 
 REFERRED TO. 
 
 /^Lschylos, xlvi. 
 
 Albertus Magnus, xcv., 207 
 
 Aldrich, 121, 129 
 
 Alighieri. See Dante 
 
 Anaxagoras, 76 
 
 Angeleri, F., 257 
 
 Anselm, c. 
 
 Aquinas. See Thomas 
 
 Aristotle, xlvi., xc. sqq., I, 2, 3, 4, 
 5 n., 8 nn., 17 n., 18, 21 n., 23 n., 
 27 n., 28 n., 37, 39, 44, 46 nn., 
 47 sq., 52, 59, 63, 76, 77 nn., 84, 
 93 n., 97, 131 n., 132 n., 139, 
 141, 160, 161, 165, 169, 170 n., 
 174, 181 n., 190, 194, 197 n., 221, 
 260, 261, 262 sq., 2t)8, 277, 286 sq., 
 344 n., 346, 356, 360, 364, 366, 
 
 373, 383 
 Augustine, St., 43, 277, 289 
 
 Bain, Professor Alexander, 43, 277, 
 
 289 
 Bastian, Dr. A., 282 
 Bckker, I. (^Anecd. Gmca), 347 
 Belger, Chr., 23 n. 
 Berkeley, ciii. sqq. 
 Bichat, 292 
 Biese, Fr., 264 n. 
 Boethius, 62 
 
 Bonaventura, St., 38, 39, 139 
 Bonitz, H., 18, 46 n., 59 n., 262 n. 
 Bonnet, Ch., 20 
 
 Brentano, Fr. , 161, 207 n., 344 n. 
 Bruno, G., xxv. , xxviii. 
 Buonarroti, Michelangelo, 361 
 Buroni, G., xc. n., 65, 73, 79, 344 n. 
 Bywatcr, I., 75, 260, 342 n. 
 
 Casara, Sebast., xcvii. n., 40, 139 
 Condillac, Abbe, xxvi., cvii. , 20, 37 
 Cornoldi, G. M., 206 n. 
 
 Dante, xlvi., 361 
 Davidson, T., 75 n., 347 
 Demokritos, 277 
 
 Descartes, xxvi., xcviii. sq. , i, 62, 63, 
 
 77, 87 n., 248 
 Dionysios Thrax, 347 
 
 Erdmann, J. E., xxv. 
 Eucken, R., 8 n. 
 
 Fabrizio, Fra, 139, 339 
 Ferri, Professor Luigi, 58 
 Fichte, J. G., civ., 63, 141, 191, 194 
 sqq., 203 
 
 Galilei, G., xxv. 
 
 Galluppi, Pasqu., xxvi., 2, 87 n, 
 
 Gaunilo, c. 
 
 Genovesi, 261 
 
 Geulinx, ci. 
 
 Gioberti, Vine, xxxv. , 206 n. 
 
 Gioja, Melch., xxvi. 
 
 Goethe, 8, 360 sq. 
 
 Green, Professor T. H., 54 ri 
 
 Hamilton, Sir Wm., I, t^S, 43, 158, 
 178 sq., 199 n., 241 
 
 Haureau, B., 264 n. 
 
 Hegel, civ. sqq,, 5 n., lO, iS, 21, 23, 
 28 sq., 46, 49 n., 50 sqq., 78, 14 1 
 sqq., 161, 175 n., 221, 250, 327, 
 
 344 n., 373 
 Plerakleitos, xc, civ., 75, 78, 260, 
 
 342 n. 
 Hume, David, cii. sq., 77 
 
 Jaesche, J. B., 23 
 
 Jesuits, 369 
 
 Jesus, 161 
 
 Jevons, W. S., 44, I2I 
 
 Jourdain, A., xcv. n. 
 
 Kant, Im., xxvi., ciii. sqq., lO, 18, 
 21, 23, 24, 32, 33 nn., 34 sqq., 37, 
 46, 48, 49, 62, 63, 78, 79, 87 n., 
 95, 96 sqq., 120 sqq., l-'4, 127, 
 
 135, 139. 194. 195' 255. 201, 290, 
 
 336 sq., 366 sq.
 
 392 LIST OF AUTHORS QUOTED OR REFERRED TO. 
 
 Kirchhoff, Hermann, xciv. n. 
 Kirchner, J. H., xciv. n. 
 
 Lange, F. A., 24, 106, 252 
 Leibniz, i, 28 n., 37, 285 
 Lersch, L. , 347 
 Locke, J., xxvi., ci. sqq., 37, 38 
 
 Malebranche, xxvi., ci. 
 
 Mamiani della Rovere, Count T., 
 
 xxxiv. , 68, 87 n., 95 n. 
 Mastrofini, Abbe, 349 
 MUller, F. Max, 43, 50 n., 223 sq. 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, 15 
 
 Occam. See William 
 
 Paoli, F., xxvii., xli. n. 
 
 Parmenides, xc. sq., 21, 75, 76, 78 
 
 Pesch, Tilmann, 266 
 
 Pini Ermenegildo, 349 
 
 Plato, xc. sq., 2, 37, 76, Tl , 260, 
 
 268 sq., 360, 389 
 Plotinus, xciv., 177, 277, 327, 360 
 Plutarch, 360 
 Pomponazzi, xcviii. 
 Porphyry, no n., 263 sq. n., 278, 
 
 308 n. 
 Pythagoras, 76 
 
 Reid, Thos. , 37, 121 sqq., 177 .sqq. 
 Reinhold, K. L., 201 
 Kichter, Arthur, xciv. n. 
 Romagnosi, G. D., xxvi. 
 
 .Schell, J. H., 266 n. 
 
 Schelling, F. W. J., civ., 20, 141, 
 
 202 sq. 
 Schmidt, K. E. A., 347 
 Schneid, xcvi. n. 
 
 Schuster, Paul, 75 n. 
 
 Schwegler, Alb., xxv., 18 
 
 Sebadius, 338 
 
 Sokrates, 76 
 
 Spencer, Herbert, 3, 4, 54 n., 199 n., 
 
 228 sqq., 261 sq., 280, 289, 292 
 Spinoza, B., ci., 62, 239 
 Stadler, Aug., 105 n. 
 Steinthal, H., 347 
 Stewart, Dug., 37 
 Suarez, Fr., cvi. 
 
 Taglioretti, Ang. , 171 n. 
 
 Talamo, Salvatore, xcvi. n. 
 
 Teichmiiller, Gust., 262 n., 366 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred, xliv. , xciii. n., 21, 
 286 _ 
 
 Thomas Aquinas, St., Ixxxix. n., xciii. 
 sqq., xcv., i, 5 n., 8 n., 9, 18, 22, 
 39 n., 40 n., 47, 48, 59, 77, 84, 
 95 n., 123 n., 139, 158, 161, 183 
 sq. , 221, 260, 262 sq., 275 n., 286 
 sq., 312, 338, 342 sq. n., 346 
 
 Trendelenburg, Ad., 6 n., lO, 24, 
 48 n., 59 n., 62 sq., 158, 262 n, 
 
 Ueberweg, F., xxv. 264 n, 
 
 Vanini, L., xxv., xcviii. 
 Vico, G. B., xxv., 386 
 
 Walter, Jul., 366 
 William of Occam, 63 
 Wolf, Chr., 2 
 Wordsworth, xliv. 
 
 Zechariah, 342 n. 
 
 Zell, Karl, xciv. n. 
 
 Zeller, Edw. , xciv. n., 24, 27 n., 
 
 262 n. 
 Zigliara, Cardinal, 88, 139, 263 n.
 
 INDEX TO DEFINITIONS AND 
 PRINCIPAL SUBJECTS. 
 
 Absolute and relative knowledge, Il8 
 
 Abstract, 31 ; abstraction, 185 
 
 Absurd, 173 
 
 Accident, 236 
 
 Action, 85 ; actions, 362 
 
 Actuality, 219 
 
 /Esthetics, 359 sq. 
 
 Affirmation, 32, 40, II2, 132; does 
 not involve negation, 221 ; versus 
 intuition, 40 
 
 Animate versus animal, 301 
 
 Anthropology, supernatural, 237 
 
 Anoetic versus dianoetic, 330 ; abso- 
 lute, 49 
 
 Apodeictic method, 248 sq. 
 
 Apprehension, 40, 121 sq., 132 
 
 Archetype, 358, 362 
 
 Arts, fine, 359 
 
 Ascetics, 362, 379 
 
 Assent, 12 sqq. ; gratuitous, 14 ; in- 
 stinctive, 14 
 
 Attention, intellectual, 191 
 
 Atoms, 295 sq. 
 
 Authority, 14 
 
 B 
 
 Becoming, 151 sqq. 
 Beginning, absolute unthinkable, 241 
 Being (cf. Entity, Ideal, Real, Moral), 
 36 sq., 40, 159 ; felt, 126 ; formal, 
 87 ; ideal, 38, 87, 108 sq., no sq., 
 327 ; identity of, 118; indeterminate, 
 115; initial, 338; known, 126, 
 327 ; manifested, manifesting, and 
 manifest, 96; modes of, 186, 327 
 sq. ; moral, 328 sq. ; order of, 1 15 
 sqq. ; origin of idea of, 89 sqq. ; 
 particular, 44 sq. ; possible, 44 sq., 
 87, 108 sq. ; undefinable, 237; uni- 
 versal, 40, 44 sq. , 87 
 
 Body, 211, 269, 304 sqq. 
 276 sqq., 305 sqq. 
 
 and soul, 
 
 Callology, 359 sq. 
 
 Categories, 331 ; Kant's, 96 sqq. 
 
 Cause, 236, 242 sqq. ; first, 246 sq., 
 
 255 ; of error, 181 
 Certainty, 158 
 Classes versus genera, 221 
 Cognition, direct, first, indirect, 131 ; 
 
 intellectual, 1 1 ; negative, 3 sqq. ; 
 
 objective, 13 ; philosophical, 17 ; 
 
 popular, 17 ; reflexive, 131 ; sub- 
 jective, 13 ; synthetic, X31 ; theory 
 
 of, 1 14 sqq. 
 Concept (how formed), 33 sqq., 86, 
 
 no, 122, 136 
 Consciousness versus knowledge, 199 
 
 sq. 
 Contingency, 81 sq., 84, 245, 319 
 Continuity, 295, 302 
 Contradiction, principle of, 173, 240 
 Conviction, 15, 158, 247 
 Cosmology, 254 sq., 317 sq. 
 Cosmopolitics, 362, 387 
 Created things have being, 319 sqq., 
 
 344, 352 sq. 
 Creation, nature of, 349 sqq. ; proofs 
 
 of, 319 sqq. 
 
 D 
 
 Death, 307 sqq. 
 
 Demonstration {see Apodeictic) versus 
 
 persuasion, 15, 18, 158, 188 
 Deontology, 325 sqq., 350 sqq. ; 
 
 general, 351 sqq. ; human, 361 ; 
 
 special, 359 sqq. 
 Determinate ideas, 136 
 Dianoetic. See Anoetic 
 Didactic method, 248 sq.
 
 394 
 
 INDEX TO DEFINITIONS 
 
 Difference, a realization, 73 
 Discursus, 122 
 Duties, 368 sqq. 
 
 E 
 
 Economy, 362, 381 sqq. 
 
 Education, 362, 379 sqq. ; of human 
 race, 388 sq. 
 
 Ego, generation of, 214 sqq. ; a feel- 
 ing, 234, 258, 126; and noil- Ego, 
 196, 221 
 
 Entity, 37 ; felt versus understood, 
 117 
 
 Error, 15, 167, iSi, 187 
 
 Essence, 37, 58, 59, 112; gi-ades of, 
 74; of being, 41 sq., 88 sq., 107 
 sq., 124, 126; realized, 73 
 
 Ethics, 362 sq. ; general and special, 
 364, 390 ; principle of, 366 
 
 Eudsemonolog}', 370 sq. 
 
 Excitation, 297 sq. 
 
 Exigence, moral, 357 ; objective and 
 ^ subjective, 353 sqq. 
 
 Existence, a native cognition, 38, 
 III ; not predicated univocally of 
 God and created things, 336 sq. 
 
 Experience, 10 
 
 Extension, 85, 212 sq., 269 sqq. 
 
 External world, 269 sqq. 
 
 Externality, 210 n. , 212 
 
 Extra-subjective, 86, 209, 330 
 
 Faculty of error, 183 
 
 Faith, 183 
 
 Feeling, 69 sq., 132, 194, 257 ; fun- 
 damental, 212 sqq., 288 sqq., 305 
 
 Felt, 36; activity, 66, 125; versus 
 understood, 214 
 
 T'orce, 211 
 
 Form, 62, 92 sqq., 107 sq., 117 ; of 
 cognition, 95, 97 sqq. ; of intellect, 
 96, 97 sqq., 159 
 
 Freedom, 372 sq. 
 
 Fundamental feeling, 212 sq., 288 
 sqq., 305 
 
 Cenera {sec Classes), 221, 332 
 
 (ieneration, 302 sq. 
 
 God, 65, 146, 167 ; nature of our 
 knowledge of, 334 sqq. ; not ob- 
 ject of intuition, 338 ; proofs of 
 existence of, 335 sq. 
 
 Goodness, 363 sq. 
 
 Grounds, 4 sq. ; extrinsic and in- 
 trinsic, 5 ; formal, moral, real, 6 ; 
 ultimate, 4 sqq. 
 
 H 
 
 Heuristic method, 248 sq. 
 Hypotheses, 244 
 
 I. See Ego 
 
 Idea {see Ground), 5, 45 n., 81, 100, 
 112, 167 
 
 Ideal Being {see Being), 41 sq., 44 
 sqq., 60, 70, 87, 96, 108 sq. 
 
 Idealist, transcendental, 163 
 
 Ideality, 41 sq., 45 sq., 113 
 
 Identity, 78 ; principle of, 172 ; ab- 
 solute, 141 
 
 Ideology, 19, 22 sqq., 136; method 
 of, 27 sqq. 
 
 Ignorance, 13 
 
 Illusion, 145, 163 sqq. 
 
 Imagination, intellectual, 208 
 
 Immediate knowing, 55 
 
 Immortality, 264 
 
 Individual, 218, 220, 332 
 
 Individuum vagum, vagissimum, 176 
 
 Inference, 122 
 
 Infinite, 222 sqq. 
 
 Instinct versus sensitivity, 291 
 
 Integration, principle of, 246 
 
 Intellect, 137 ; active and possible, 
 88, 139, 207 
 
 Intellective perception, 55, 60, 85, 
 87, 192, 194 sq., 203, 214 sqq. 
 
 Intellectual attention, 191; imagina- 
 tion, 208 
 
 Intelligence versus sense, 260 
 
 Intuition, 21 sq., 169 sq., 205, 325 
 
 Judgments, ideal and real, 13 ; pos- 
 sible, 13 ; primitive versus deri- 
 vative, 14 ; synthetic a priori, 33, 
 119 sqq., 128 sq. ; versus affirma- 
 tions, 32 
 
 K 
 
 Knowing, and thinking, 10 ; absolute 
 and relative, 332 ; direct, 16 sq. ; 
 philosophical versus popular, 15
 
 AND PRINCIPAL SUBJECTS. 
 
 395 
 
 Life, 292 
 
 Light of reason, 138 ; of intellect, 138 
 
 Limits, 79 
 
 Limitations, 81, 320 ; number of, not 
 
 infinite, 323 
 Literature, 359 
 Logic, II, 19, 22 sqq., 131, 140, 159, 
 
 187, 189 ; of Hegel, 140 sqq. 
 
 M 
 
 Materiated sciences, 325 
 
 Matter, 62, 68, 83, 219; of cognition, 
 
 96, 325 
 Mediate knowing, 55 
 Means, 362, 379 
 Meity, 202 
 
 Method, rules of, 248 
 Modes, absolute and relative, 85 ; ideal 
 
 and real, 70 ; ideal, real and moral, 
 
 327 sq. ; of being, 165 sq., 186, 
 
 327 sqq. 
 Moral being, 327 sq. ; faculty, 366 
 
 N 
 
 Necessity, loi, i6i ; ontological and 
 
 deontological, 354 
 Negation, 79, 221 
 Nomology, 365 
 Non-being, 209 n. 
 N'on-Ego. See Ego 
 Nothing, 79, 80, 209 n. 
 Nouns, 171 
 Number, 219 
 
 O 
 
 Object, 38, 62 sq. ; absolute, 321 ; 
 and term, 21 sq., 36, 193 
 
 Objective, 48 
 
 Obligation, moral, 356, 363 
 
 Observation, 27 ; external and inter- 
 nal, 30 ; validity of, 30, 166 
 
 One (the) and the Many, 75 sqq. 
 
 Order of being {See Being) ; of 
 thought, 32, 35 
 
 Organization, 299 sqq. 
 
 Origin of ideas, 38 and passim 
 
 Pantheism, 205 sqq., 338 sqq. 
 Particular, 71, 81 
 Passion (Tra^oj), 85 
 
 Pedagogics, 379 
 
 Perceived being, 83 
 
 Perception, 40, 41, 55, 82, 1 36 sq., 
 179 sqq., 190, 194 sq., 205 sejq., 
 211, 214 ; immediate, 223 
 
 Perfection, relations of, 351 sqq. 
 
 Person, personality, 357 
 
 Persuasion, 13 ; 7'crsiis conviction ; 
 versus demonstration, 15, 18, 158, 
 188 
 
 Philosophy, various definitions of, i 
 sqq., 9 ; end of, 338 ; general and 
 special, 8 ; progressive and regres- 
 sive, 20, 27 
 
 Politics, 362, 383 sqq. 
 
 Possible, 87, 100 sqq., 108 sq. 
 
 Practice, theory of, 367 
 
 Practical reason, 366 
 
 Precategorical absolute, 72 
 
 Predicate, 36, 130 
 
 Principle of cognition and identity, 
 172 sq. ; in act, 85 
 
 Probability, 251 sqq. 
 
 Process (Hegel's), 18 
 
 Proposition, 122 
 
 Property, 372 sqq. 
 
 Psychoiog)', 254 sq. 
 
 Quantity, 219 
 Quiet, scientific, il 
 
 R 
 
 Rational principle, 198 
 
 Real {see Being), 36, 41 sq., no sq. 
 
 Reality, 41 sq., 69 sq., 1 13, 219 sq. ; 
 
 abstract, pure, 69 ; of being, 66 sq. 
 Reason, 118, 137 sq. ; light of, 138; 
 
 practical and theoretic, 366 
 Reasoning, 184, 203 ; sciences of, 
 
 325 sqq. 
 Reflection, 14, 16 sq., 54 sq., 137, 
 
 140 sqq., 181 sq., 184 sq. , 187, 
 
 231, 240, 247 
 Relations of ideas, 169 
 Relativity, 119 
 Religion, 315 sq., 367 
 Right, 371 sq. 
 
 Satisfaction, 18 sq. 
 
 Scientific quiet or repose, 1 1 sq. 
 
 Sensation, versus perception, 177 
 
 sqq., 190, 192, 230 ; elements of, 
 
 236, 258
 
 396 
 
 IXDEX TO DEFINITIONS, ETC. 
 
 Sense versus intelligence, 260 
 
 Sensitive perception, 192 
 
 Sensitivity versus instinct, 291 sq. 
 
 Sensual instinct, 291 sqq. 
 
 Simplicity, 1 14, 264 sqq. 
 
 Sophistic, 189 sq. 
 
 Soul, 262 sqq., 293 ; destiny of, 313 
 sq. ; elementary versus organic, 
 301 ; faculties of, 309 sq. ; laws of, 
 312 ; and body, 276 sqq., 305 sq. 
 
 Space, 269 
 
 Species, 113, 332 
 
 Starting-points, four, 20, 23 
 
 Subject, 36, 37, 62 sq. ; human, 
 intellective, 63 ; versus extra-sub- 
 ject, 238 
 
 Subsistence, 1 1 1 
 
 Substance, 115, 225, 233 sqq., 235 
 sqq. ; and accident, 236 ; of mind, 
 229 sq., 280 
 
 Substratum, 273 
 
 Syllogism, 122, 249 sqq. 
 
 Synthesis, 136 sq. 
 
 Telelics, 362 sq. 
 
 Terms, proper and improper, 67, 82 ; 
 term versus object, 21, 36, 64, 193 
 
 Theolog}', Natural, 333 sq. 
 Thing-in-itself, 210 
 Thinking and knowing, 10 
 Transcendental idealist, 163 ; scep- 
 ticism, 166 
 Truth, 158, 162; created, 108 
 
 U 
 
 Universe, 346 sqq. 
 
 Unitarians, 49, 327 
 
 Unity of man, 1 14, 304 sqq. 
 
 Universality, 41, 64 sq., 71 sq., 87, 
 
 102, 166 
 Univoce, 346 sq. 
 
 Verbs, 171 
 
 Via eminentic!', 348 ; exclusionis, 348 
 
 Virtue, 363 sq. 
 
 Vital instinct, 291 sq. 
 
 W 
 
 Will, the essence of personality, 357 ; 
 of God the source of legislation, 
 368 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page II, line 25, for vol. ii. } 398, read vol. i. } 304 n. 
 ,, 23, note *, line 6, for 32, read 302. 
 
 ,, =94, for { spontanei'ty.''^' } ^"^ ^°''^* ^"'^ spontaneity. 
 
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 Jean Jarousseau. Translated from 
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 Blessing and Blessed : a Sketch of 
 
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 CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 University of California, San Diego 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 
 
 MAY 2 9 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 a 39 
 
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