[CHAPTER XVII.]
ALL THAT IS NOT CONTRADICTORY IN INTUITIVE IDEAS IS AFFIRMED OF GOD.
130. We have seen that all that is positive in general and indeterminate conceptions is affirmed of God. Let us see if the same is true of intuitive ideas. These ideas, in all that touches our understanding, may be reduced to these four; passive sensibility, active sensibility, intelligence, and will.
131. Passive sensibility, or the form under which the objects of the external world are presented to our senses, cannot be attributed to the infinite being. This negative proposition, the infinite being is not passively sensible, is strictly true.
Does this proposition deny any thing positive of God? Let us examine it.
The form of passive sensibility is extension, which necessarily implies multiplicity. The extended is necessarily a collection of parts: to deny extension of God is to affirm his simplicity; to deny that he is a collection of beings, and to affirm the indivisible unity of his nature.
132. Besides extension, there is in the passive sensibility of objects only the relation of causes which produce in us the effects called sensations. This causality can and must be affirmed of God: for it is certain that the infinite cause is capable of producing in us all sensations without the intervention of any medium.
133. The negative proposition: the infinite being is not material, means nothing more than the other; the infinite being is not passively sensible. We do not know the intrinsic nature of matter: all we know is, that it is presented in intuition to our sensibility under the form of extension, as an essentially multiplex object. When we deny that God is material or corporeal, we deny that he is passively sensible, or that he is multiple under the form of extension.
134. The other properties of matter, such as mobility, impenetrability, and divisibility, relate to extension, or to a particular impression caused on our senses. The difficulties that may be raised on these points are solved by the preceding paragraphs.