103. The idea of being may express either simple existence, in which case it is substantive, or the relation of a predicate with a subject, and then it is copulative. In the proposition, "the sun is," being is substantive, that is, expresses existence; in the proposition, "the sun is luminous," being is copulative, that is, it denotes the relation of the predicate with a subject.
104. The ideas of identity and distinction originate in the ideas of being and of not-being; and thus the idea of copulative being, which affirms the identity of a predicate with a subject, flows also in a manner from the idea of substantive being.
105. Being, which is the principal object of the understanding, is not the possible inasmuch as possible. We conceive possibility only in order to actuality. Possibility flows from actuality, not actuality from possibility. We could not conceive pure possibility, that is, possibility without existence, did we not conceive finite beings in whose idea being is not of necessity involved, and of whose appearance and disappearance we are incessantly reminded by experience.
106. The understanding perceives being, and this is a condition indispensable to all its perceptions; but the idea of being is not the only one offered to it, since it knows different modes of being, which, by the very fact that they are modes, add something to the general and absolute idea of existence.
107. When we consider the essences of things, and abstract their reality, our cognitions always involve this condition,—if they exist. There can be only a conditional science of the purely possible, insomuch as it is not; that is, provided the object pass from possibility to reality. We must, in order to establish pure possibility so that it may have necessary relations, subject to the condition of existence, have recourse to a necessary being, origin of all truth.
108. The essences of things in the abstract mean nothing, nor can they become the object of affirmation or negation, unless we suppose a necessary being in which is the reason of the relations of things, and of the possibility of their existence.
109. Pure truth, independent of all understanding, of all being created or uncreated, is an illusion, or rather an absurdity. With pure nothing there is no truth. Truth cannot be atheistic; without God there is no truth.
110. We not only know being, but also not-being. We have an idea of negation, and it always refers to some being. Absolute nothing cannot be the object of intelligence. The idea of not-being has its own peculiar fecundity; combined with that of being, it gives the principle of contradiction, engenders the ideas of distinction and multiplicity, and makes negative judgments possible.
111. The idea of being does not flow from sensations; neither is it innate, in the sense that it pre-exists in our understanding as a type prior to all perceptions. There is no reason why it may not be called innate, if this mean only a condition sine qua non of all our intellectual acts, and consequently of the exercise of our innate faculties. The idea of being is mingled in every intellectual perception, but it is not offered to us with perfect clearness and distinctness until we separate it by reflection from the particular ideas which accompany it.
112. Essence is not distinguished from existence even in finite beings. It is a distinction in conceptions, to which there is no real distinction corresponding.