3. By that which is being simply we understand real being, concrete and infinitely perfect; ... in a word, that which is being simply is God.
12. From the first instant of existence the mind enjoys ideal perception, not indeed reflexively, but directly.
13. Among the intelligible truths, which we apprehend ideally, God occupies the first place, the intellective perception of whom, although essentially distinct from the intuition of the beatified, is terminated, not at a representative image, but at God himself.
The reader will now, we trust, understand without difficulty what is the fundamental idea of ontologism—namely, that God is the immediate object of the intellect, the ideal object which faces it from its creation, is present to it as its light and its luminous, intelligible term of vision, in which all ideal, necessary, self-evident, eternal ideas, verities, realities, are concentrated, beheld, made luminous; lighting up all objects whatsoever which exist and are perceived by sense and intellect, so that the things that are made are clearly seen by the invisible things of God, even his eternal power and Godhead; as Malebranche expressed it, “in Deo,” and Gioberti, “in Deo et per Deum”—in God, and by or through him, as clouds in a luminiferous ether. For an explanation of the scholastic doctrine of the origin of universal ideas we refer the reader to a former article on Dr. Stöckl's Philosophy. In brief, it is the reverse of the one just delineated, viz., the universal and transcendental ideas are derived by abstraction from created things, and the knowledge of God is obtained by a discursive act of reasoning, by which we ascend from the knowledge of creatures to the knowledge of the Creator, whose invisible essence and attributes are understood by the things that are made. That is, God is known by a mediate and not an immediate apprehension, resulting in an intellectual judgment that he is. The mind terminates at a representative and inadequate image of God, and not at God himself or that which is God, real, concrete, necessary, infinite being, which is the remote and reflected object of the intellect.
We are now prepared to answer the question, What is the harm and danger of ontologism on account of which it has been condemned? It has not been condemned as heretical, for it does not formally, directly, and explicitly contradict any doctrine of faith. The Holy See has simply decided that it cannot be safely taught—that is, that it cannot be taught with a safe conscience, without danger to the faith, and consequently without grievous sin. It must therefore contain in it an error which cannot be extensively held and taught in Catholic schools without a serious danger of indirectly subverting Catholic faith and doctrine, especially in the minds of the young and inconsiderate. While this danger was only remote or not yet apparent, the error might be tolerated, and left to be opposed and refuted by argument. Moreover, it might be held and advocated in good faith and without sin by intelligent and pious men, who are liable to error when left to their own reasonings about abstruse matters [pg 365] in theology and philosophy. But when the danger was apparent and proximate, it was necessary to appeal to the supreme authority of the Roman Church, that the whole matter might be thoroughly examined and adjudicated; and, the judgment being once rendered, the cause is finished for all good Catholics. Thenceforth all that remains to be done is to study the import of the decision, and to search into the reasons by which the condemned errors may be proved false by philosophical and theological arguments, and the opposite truths brought out into a clearer light for the advancement of sound and solid science and the protection of the faith.
That part of Catholic doctrine which was endangered and indirectly subverted by ontologism is the one which relates to the distinction between nature and grace, the rational knowledge of God attainable by man in this life, and the immediate intuition of God enjoyed by the blessed in heaven. Ontologism destroys the real distinction between the natural and the supernatural orders, between the abstractive vision of God by reason and faith, and the intuitive vision of God without any medium, and face to face. It is true that ontologists have never taught that man has, or can have, a clear vision of the divine essence, like that of the blessed, by his unaided natural powers. This is a heresy condemned by the General Council of Vienne. Moreover, it would be too absurd for any sane person to maintain that such a vision is congenital and possessed by all men from the first instant of creation. Nor would any one who maintains that the idea of God is impressed on the soul at its creation be so extravagant as to assert that the clear and distinct conception of God which can be obtained by reason and faith is present to the minds of all men from their birth. Ontologists are careful to state that there is a difference between the immediate cognition of God in this life and that of the life to come. And all who maintain any kind of ideal cognition which is congenital or innate, understand by this something which exists unconsciously in the soul until its powers are developed. The object is there, facing the intellect, but the intellect has its eyes closed, and cannot perceive it. When it perceives it, it is first obscurely, then clearly, then more or less distinctly. Its congenital cognition is an unconscious, undeveloped act. But all the principles of conscious, developed cognition are in that act, and are only evolved by the operation of the senses and the intellectual faculties. The error condemned is the assertion that this cognition has God in his intelligibility as real and necessary being as its immediate object. And though it is not formally a heresy, since it does not assert that the immediate cognition of God is identical with the beatific vision, or deny the necessity of the light of glory to make the soul capable of the beatific vision, it is erroneous, inasmuch as it removes that which really makes the essential difference of the vision of the blessed, as distinct from the natural cognition of any created intelligence. This difference is defined by Benedict XIV., in the Const. Benedictus Deus, to be that the blessed see God “without the mediation of anything created which presents itself as the object seen”—nulla mediante creaturâ in ratione objecti visi se habente. Every other cognition of God must therefore have some created [pg 366] object of intellectual vision as an intermediary between the intellect and God—that is, must be mediate and not immediate cognition. An immediate cognition, however obscure and imperfect, must therefore be essentially the same with the clear, beatific intuition of the essence of God, and capable of being expanded, extended, developed, increased, made more penetrating or powerful, without being essentially changed, until it equals or surpasses the intuition of the highest angel in heaven. The light of faith or the light of glory can be therefore only aids to the improvement of the human intellect in its own natural capacity and activity—as if one should see the stars more plainly by a telescope, and afterwards receive a more perfect body with a visual organ superior to any telescope that was ever made.
A more elaborate similitude will make the difference of immediate and mediate cognition of God more plain. Let us suppose a barbarian lying asleep on the shore of his lonely island in the Pacific, while a large ship, the first which has ever approached it, has just come within the most distant range of vision. There is an object, then on his horizon, which he has the power to see, but does not perceive until he awakes. He perceives it at first as a very small and dimly-seen object—as something, he knows not what. It may be a cloud, a bird, a wave sparkling in the sun, a canoe. It is a large man-of-war which is the real object perceived, but he does not know that it is a ship, or know its contents, or even know what a ship is. This is an obscure perception. By-and-by he can see that it is not a cloud, or bird, or canoe, but a large, moving structure, whose principal parts are visible to him. This is a clear perception. When it has anchored, he has been taken on board, has seen its crew and armament, its cabins and hold, and has learned what is its purpose and the utility of its principal parts, he has a distinct conception. After he has learned the language of the sailors, and has been instructed to a greater or less extent, he acquires a more adequate and perfect knowledge, like that which the sailors themselves possess; he joins the crew, and becomes an expert seaman, and finds himself to have become much superior in knowledge and happiness to what he was before the ship came to his island.
Let us also suppose that a bottle is washed ashore at another island, and picked up by a native. When he opens it, he finds in it a drawing representing a large ship, and a paper containing particular information about the ship and its crew. This bottle had been thrown overboard after the ship had sprung a leak in mid-ocean, and was about to founder. After the bottle has been found by the native, Europeans arrive at the island, by whom the papers are examined, and their contents explained to the native, who learns also from the explanation of the drawing to understand what the ship is, its use, construction, parts, etc. He thus gains substantially the same knowledge of that ship and its crew with that which the other native gained about the other ship, though in a different way, without ever seeing the ship itself, but only an image of it. One has immediate, the other mediate cognition. One sees the object in itself, the other sees it in something else. In the first case the native saw something which was a ship, but while it was distant it was not [pg 367] visible as a ship, only as an object. Afterwards it was visible in its outward shape and appearance as a ship, in clear, unmistakable contrast with every different object, but not distinctly understood or closely inspected, or made the principal object of the occupation, the attachment, the enjoyment, of the native—in a word, the home and centre of his chief earthly good. When he first saw something in the distance, he really saw the ship, and in that vision was virtually contained all that he afterwards discovered in respect to it; whereas, the other native never saw the other ship, and never could see it by means of drawings or verbal descriptions, although he could learn that it was a ship, and what ship it was, where it sailed from, who sailed it, and when and where it foundered.
The above comparison is not perfect, since every comparison must limp at least a little; but we think it is sufficient as an illustration of the process by which the human intellect attains to the knowledge of God and the beatific vision of God, according to ontologism as differing from the doctrine of sound Catholic theology. According to ontologism, God presents himself to the intellect, when he creates it, as its immediate Object, objective Idea, or intelligible Term. So soon as it is capable of apprehending eternal verities, it apprehends that which is God, although not yet knowing explicitly that what it apprehends is God—that is, the one, living, most perfect Being who is the creator and sovereign lord of all things. By another step it acquires a clear conception of God, and makes the judgment that God is, and that he is eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipotent. This judgment is an evolution from that cognition which existed at the beginning as a habit into an explicit act, as the explicit act of faith is deduced from the habit of faith given to the infant by baptism. That God is, is known by what he is—that is, by his essence, which is seen in the eternal verities or divine ideas as they are in reality, not distinguishable from the divine substance. Faith gives an obscure perception of the interior mysteries of the divine substance which are beyond the ken of the intellect unaided by revelation, or, in other words, are superintelligible verities; and the light of glory increases the power of intellectual vision so that it sees clearly and distinctly the interior essence of God, which completes the beatification of the soul.
In this place we may cite the third of the seven condemned propositions, which expresses the afore-mentioned theory, as taken in connection with the fifth. This third proposition is: “Universals, objectively considered, a parte rei, are not really distinguishable from God”; and the fifth: “All other ideas are only modifications of the idea in which God is intellectively perceived as simply being—tamquam ens simpliciter intelligitur.” Universals are general ideas, each one of which is capable of being predicated of a multitude of subjects. The logical universals are five—genus, species, differentia, attribute, accident. The ten categories of Aristotle include all the supreme genera, though some maintain that a better division may be made. The transcendental ideas are those which transcend all generic classification, because they may be predicated of every genus and all its inferiors. They are the ideas of being, unity, the good, the true, [pg 368] the beautiful. They belong, therefore, to the universals, although predicated in analogous and not identical senses of the diverse genera and their inferior subjects. Take the supreme genus substance, as an instance, and follow it down to man—substance, corporeal substance, organized substance, animal, rational animal, i.e., man. His proximate genus is animal, his differentia rationality, which constitute the species man. The concrete reality of the universals, substance, etc., terminating in the species which is rational animal is found only in individual men. The direct universals, genus, species, differentia, exist, a parte rei, in each individual of the human species. Each man is a substance, corporeal, organized, animal, rational, and these universals can be predicated of him as their subject. The transcendental predicates, also, are connected with individual men as their subject. Individual men have being, unity, verity, goodness, beauty. But these may be predicated in senses which are only analogous to each other of the composite essence, of its distinct parts, soul and body, of the attributes or essential qualities of man, and of the accidents of individual men. For instance, the human essence is essentially good; the soul and body are good each in its own order; rationality is good; learning, valor, amiability, moral virtue, sanctity, are good; but there is analogy only, not identity, in these various kinds of good. The same is true of being. It is absurd, therefore, to speak, as Plato does, of a universal good, true, beautiful, or to speak of any universal idea, such as being, or a modification of being, as having any objective reality as a universal, except as a concept of the mind with a foundation in that which is or may be an actually existing thing. They are metaphysical essences, with their generic, specific, qualifying, and transcendental predicates. All the categories or supreme genera together make up what is called the nature of things, considered metaphysically; considered in their physical being in the sum of all concrete existences, they make up universal nature. The metaphysical essences are necessary, immutable, eternal, and potentially infinite. They are the eternal verities, the necessary truths, which copy the divine ideas upon nature or the universe, where God has impressed them, and are abstracted from the works of the Creator by the intellect of man. They are distinguishable from God, therefore they are not in the essence of God, or the divine ideas subsisting in the divine substance, and are not there seen by the intellect. This was long ago proved by philosophers and theologians. It is now declared by authority that it is unsafe thus to identify them with God, and thereby make him the immediate object of the intellect. The reason why it is unsafe is that it destroys the differentia which makes our rational cognition of God specifically distinct from the intuitive cognition of the blessed. There are also other dangers to faith and sound theology involved in the doctrines or tendencies of ontologism, which we have not space to notice.