[Footnote 91: 1 Cor. ii. 11; Rom. i. 19, 20; 1 Cor. xiii. 12.]
That is, we understand the attributes and interior relations of God as these are made intelligible to our minds by analogies derived from created things, in which, as in a mirror, the image of God is reflected. The original and obscure idea of God given to reason in its constitution--but given only on that side of it which faces creation, including therefore in itself creation and its relation to the creator--may be represented in various forms. It must be distinctly borne in mind that our natural intuition is not an intuition of the substance or essence of the divine being, or an intuition of God by that uncreated light in which he sees himself and his works. God presents himself to the natural reason as Idea, or the first principle of intelligence and the intelligible, by the intelligibility which he gives to the creation. He does not disclose himself in his personality to the intellectual vision, but affirms himself to reason by a divine judgment. Our natural knowledge of God is therefore exclusively in the ideal order. The intuition from which this knowledge is derived may be called the intuition of the infinite, the eternal, the absolute the necessary, the true, the beautiful, the good, the first cause, the ultimate reason of things, etc. Real and necessary being, considered as the ground of the contingent and as facing the created intellect, adequately embraces and represents all. This intuition enters into all thought and is inseparable from the activity of the intelligent mind. The intellect always does and must apprehend, the real, which is identical with the ideal, in its thought; and when this reality or verity which it apprehends is reflected on, it always yields up two elements, the necessary and the contingent, the infinite and the finite, the absolute and the conditioned. In apprehending God, we necessarily apprehend that the soul which apprehends and the creation by which it apprehends him, must exists. In apprehending creation, we apprehend that God must be in order that the creation may have existence. If we could suppose reason to begin with the idea of God, pure and simple, we could not show how it could arrive at any idea of the creature. Neither could we, beginning with the exclusive idea of the conditioned, deduce the idea of the absolute and necessary. We can never arrive by discursive reasoning, by reflection, by logic, by deduction or induction, at any truth, not included in the principles or intuitions with which we start. Demonstration discovers no new truth, but only discloses what is contained in the intuitions of reason. It explicates, but does not create. All that we know therefore about being and existences is contained implicitly in our original intuition.
Real being is the immediate object apprehended by reason, as St. Thomas teaches, after Aristotle. "Ens namque est objectum intellectus primum, cum nihil sciri possit, nisi ipsum quod est ens in actu, ut dicitur in 9 Met. Unde nec oppositum ejus intelligere potest intellectus, non ens." "For being is the primary object of the intellect, since nothing can be known but that which is being in act, as it is said in the 9 Met. Wherefore the intellect cannot [{522}] apprehend its opposite or not being." [Footnote 92] This appears to be plain. Either the intelligible which the intelligence apprehends is real or unreal, actual being or not being, entity or nonentity, something or nothing. If the intelligence apprehends the unreal, not being, not entity, no thing; it is not intelligence, it does not apprehend. These very terms are unstatable except as negations of a positive idea. I must have the idea of the real, or of being in act, before I can deny it. I must have the idea of my own existence before I can deny I existed a century ago. If I deny or question my present existence, I must affirm it first, before I deny it, by making myself the subject of a certain predicate, non-existence, or dubious existence.
[Footnote 92: Opus. cxiii. c. 1.]
There is only one door of escape open, which is the affirmation of an intuition of possible being. But what is the intuition of the possible without the intuition of the actual? How can I affirm that being is possible, unless I have an intuition of a cause or reason situated in the very idea of being which makes it possible, and if possible necessary and actual? The very notion of absolute being which is possible only, that is, reducible to act but not reduced to act, is absurd. For it is not reducible to act except by a prior cause which is then itself actual, necessary being, and ultimate cause. Potentiality or possibility belongs only to the contingent, and is mere creability [sic] or reducibility to act through an efficient cause. Wherefore we cannot apprehend possible existence except in the apprehension of an ultimate, creative cause. All that is intelligible is either necessary being, or contingent existence having its cause in necessary being. The abstract or logical world is only a shadow or reflection of the real in our own minds, and instead of preceding and conditioning intuition, it is its product.
The real object apprehended by reason has various aspects, but they are aspects of the same object. The intuition of one aspect of being is called the intuition of truth or of the true, including truth both in the absolute and the contingent order. Truth, in regard to finite things, is the correspondence of a conception to an objective reality. This finite reality cannot be apprehended as true without a simultaneous apprehension of necessary and eternal truth as its ground and reason. The mathematical truths, for instance, in their application to existing things, express the relations of finite numbers and quantities. They are, however, apprehended as necessarily and eternally true in an order of being independent of time, space, and all contingent existences; which order of being is absolute: the type of all existing things, the ultimate ground of truth, the intelligible in se.
The intuition of the beautiful, which is "the splendor of the true," is the intuition of a certain type and the conformity of existing things to it, causing a peculiar complacency in the intellect. This complacency is grounded on a judgment of the eternal fitness and harmony of things, that is, of an absolute and necessary reason of their order in eternal truth, that is, in absolute being.
The intuition of the good is an intuition of being considered as the necessary object of volition, and of existences as having in their essence a ground of desirableness or an aptitude to terminate an act of the will. Hence good and being are convertible terms. The absolute good is absolute being, and created good is a created existence conformed to the type of the good which is necessary and eternal.
The intuition of the infinite reduces itself in like manner to the intuition of absolute being accompanied by the intuition of the finite or relative with which it is compared. The absolute is being in its plenitude, the intelligible as comprehended by intelligence in its ultimate act, neither admitting of any increase. The finite is that which can be thought as capable of increase, but, increased indefinitely, never reaches [{523}] the infinite. The term infinite, as Fénélon well observes, though negative in form--expressing the denial of limitation--is the expression of a positive idea. Herbert Spencer proves the same in a luminous and cogent manner, even from the admissions of philosophers of the sceptical school of Kant. [Footnote 93] The intuition of the infinite gives us that which is not referable to an idea of a higher order, but is itself that idea to which all others are referred as the ultimate of thought and being. This intuition of the infinite always presents itself behind every conception, and makes itself the first element of every thought.
[Footnote 93: First Principles of a New System of Philosophy.]