XX. Therefore, we must ascend to a primitive, infinite activity, which places intelligences in communication among themselves and with the corporeal world.
XXI. Therefore, purely ideological and psychological philosophy leads us to God.
XXII. Therefore, philosophy cannot commence by a single fact, the origin of all other facts, but must, and does end with this supreme fact, the infinite existence, which is God.[(12)]
[CHAPTER XIII.]
REPRESENTATION OF CAUSALITY AND IDEALITY.
126. Besides the representation of identity, there is what I have called the representation of causality. A being may represent itself, a cause its effect. Productive activity is inconceivable, if the principle of the productive act does not in some manner contain the thing produced. Therefore we say that God, the universal cause of all that does or can exist, contains in his essence all real and possible beings in a virtual or eminent manner. A being can just as well present whatever it contains in itself, as it can represent itself; causality, therefore, under the conditions above explained, may be an origin of representation.
127. And here we would remark how profound a philosopher St. Thomas shows himself to be, when he explains the manner in which God knows his creatures. In his Summa Theologica,[7] he asks if God knows things distinct from himself, and answers in the affirmative; not that he regards the divine essence as a mirror, but that by recourse to a more profound consideration he seeks the origin of this knowledge in causality. This is his doctrine in a few words: It is manifest that God knows himself perfectly; therefore he knows all his power, and consequently all the things to which it extends. Another reason, or rather enlargement of the same reason, is, that the being of the first cause is its intellect: all effects pre-exist in God as in their cause; they must, therefore, be in him in an intelligible manner, since they are his intellect itself. God then sees himself by his essence; but he sees other things not in themselves, but in his essence, inasmuch as his essence contains the similitude of everything.
The same doctrine is found in another place,[8] where he asks if they who see the divine essence see all things in God.