Chapter III: Existence and Essence (1)

12. EXISTENCE.—In the preceding chapters we examined reality in itself and in its relation to change or becoming. We have now to examine it in relation to its actual existence and to its intrinsic possibility (7, _a_).

_Existing_ or _being_ (in the participial sense: esse, _existere_, τὸ εἶναι) is a simple, indefinable notion. A being is said to exist when it is not merely possible but actual, when it is not merely potential in its active and passive causes but has become actual through those causes (_existere_: _ex-sisto_: _ex-stare_: to stand forth, distinct from its causes); or, if it have no causes, when it simply is (_esse_),—in which sense God, the Necessary, purely Actual Being, simply _is_. Thus, existence implies the notion of actuality, and is conceived as that by which any thing or essence _is, distinct from nothingness, in the actual order_.(83) Or, again, it is _the actuality of any thing or essence_. About any conceivable being we may ask two distinct questions: (_a_) What is it? and (_b_) Does such a being actually exist? The answer to the former gives us the _essence_, what is presented to the mind through the concept; the answer to the latter informs us about the actual _existence_ of the being or essence in question.

To the mind of any individual man the real existence (as also the real essence) of any being whatsoever, not excepting his own, can be known only through its ideal presence in his mind, through the concept or percept whereby it becomes for him a “known object,” an _objectum cognitum_. But this actual presence of known being to the knowing mind must not be confounded with the real existence of such being (4). Real being does not get its real existence in our minds or from our minds. Our cognition does not produce, but only discovers, actually existing reality. The latter, by acting on the mind, engenders therein the cognition of itself. Now all our knowledge comes through the senses; and sense cognition is excited in us by the direct action of material or phenomenal being on our sense faculties. But through sense cognition the mind is able to attain to a knowledge both of the possibility and of the actual existence of suprasensible or spiritual realities. Hence we cannot describe existence as the power which material realities have to excite in us a knowledge of themselves. Their existence is prior to this activity: _prius est esse quam agere_. Nor can we limit existence to material realities; for if there are spiritual realities these too have existence, though this existence can be discerned only by intellect, and not by sense.

13. ESSENCE.—In any existing thing we can distinguish _what the thing is_, its _essence_, from its actual _existence_. If we abstract from the actual existence of a thing, not considering whether it actually exists or not, and fix our attention merely on _what the thing is_, we are thinking of its _real essence_. If we positively exclude the notion of actual existence from our concept of the essence, and think of the latter as not actually existing, we are considering it formally as a _possible essence_. There is no being, even the Necessary Being, whose essence we cannot think of in the former way, _i.e._ _without including_ in our concept the notion of actual existence; but we cannot without error _positively exclude_ the notion of actual existence from our concept of the Necessary Being, or think of the latter as a _merely possible_ essence.

Taken in its widest sense, the essence of a thing (οὐσία, _essentia_, τὸ τί ἐστι, _quod quid est_, _quidditas_) means _that by which a thing is what it is_: _id quo res est id quod est_: that which gives us the answer to the question, What is this thing? _Quid est haec res?_ τί ἐστι τόδε τι.(84) Now of course any individual thing is what it is just precisely by all the reality that is in it; but we have no direct or intuitive intellectual insight into this reality; we understand it only by degrees; we explore it from various points of view, abstracting and generalizing partial aspects of it as we compare it with other things and seek to classify and define it: _ratio humana essentias rerum quasi venatur_, as the scholastics say: the human mind hunts, as it were, after the essences or natures of things. Understanding the individual datum of sense experience (what Aristotle called τόδε τι, or οὐσία πρώτη, and the scholastics _hoc aliquid_, or _substantia prima_), _e.g._ this individual, Socrates, first under the vaguest concept of being, then gradually under the more and more determinate concepts of substance, corporeal, living, sentient, rational, it finally forms the complex concept of his _species infima_, expressed by his lowest class-name, “man,” and explicitly set forth in the definition of his specific nature as a “rational animal”. Nor does our reason fail to realize that by reaching this concept of the _specific_ essence or nature of the individual, Socrates, it has not yet grasped all the reality whereby the individual is what he is. It has reached what he has in common with all other individuals of his class, what is essential to him _as a man_; it has distinguished this from the unanalysed something which makes him _this particular individual_ of his class, and which makes his specific essence this _individual essence_ (_essentia_ “_atoma_,” or “_individua_”); and it has also distinguished his essence from those accidental and ever varying attributes which are not essential to him as a man, and from those which are not essential to him as Socrates. It is only the unfathomed individual essence, as existing _hic et nunc_, that is _concrete_. All the mind’s generic and specific representations of it—_e.g._ of Socrates as a corporeal substance, a living being, a sentient being, a rational animal—are _abstract_, and all more or less inadequate, none of them exhausting its knowable reality. But it is only in so far as the mind is able to represent concrete individual things by such abstract concepts, that it can attain to _intellectual_ knowledge of their nature or reality. Hence it is that by the term “essence,” simply and _sine addito_, we always mean the essence as grasped by abstract generic or specific concepts (ἔιδος, _species_), and as thus capable of definition (λόγος, _ratio rei_). “The essence,” says St. Thomas, “is that by which the thing is constituted in its proper genus or species, and which we signify by the definition which states what the thing is”.(85) Thus understood, the essence is abstract, and gives the specific or generic type to which the individual thing belongs; but we may also mean by essence, the concrete essence, the individual person or thing (_persona_, _suppositum_, _res individua_). The relations between the objects of those two concepts of essence will be examined later.

Since the specific essence is conceived as the most fundamental reality in the thing, and as the seat and source of all the properties and activities of the thing, it is sometimes defined or described, in accordance with this notion of it, as the primary constitutive of the thing and the source of all the properties of the thing. Conceived as the foundation of all the properties of the thing it is sometimes called _substance_ (οὐσία, _substantia_). Regarded as the source of the thing’s activities, and the principle of its growth or development, it is called the _nature_ of the thing (φύσις, _natura_, from φύω, _nascor_).(86)

Since what makes a thing that which it is, by the same fact differentiates this thing from every other thing, the essence is rightly conceived as that which gives the thing its characteristic being, thereby marking it off from all other being. In reality, of course, each individual being is distinct by all that it is from every other. But since we get our intellectual knowledge of things by abstracting, comparing, generalizing, and classifying partial aspects of them, we apprehend part of the imperfectly grasped abstract essence of each individual as common to other classes (generic), and part as peculiar to that class itself (differential); and thus we differentiate classes of things by what is only part of their essence, by what we call the _differentia_ of each class, _distinguishing mentally_ between it and the generic element: which two are really _one_, really identical, in every individual of the species thus defined and classified.

But in the Aristotelian and scholastic view of the constitution of any _corporeal_ thing, there is a danger of taking what is really only part of the essence of such a thing for the whole essence. According to this view all corporeal substance is essentially composite, constituted by two really distinct, substantial principles, primal matter (πρώτη ὕλη, _materia prima_) and substantial form (ἔιδος, μορφή) united substantially, as potential and actual principles, to form one composite nature or essence. Now the kind, or species, or specific type, to which a body belongs—_e.g._, a horse, an oak, gold, water, etc.—depends upon the substantial form which actualizes the matter or potential principle. In so far as the corporeal essence is known to us at all it is known through the form, which is the principle of all the characteristic properties and activities of that particular kind of body. Hence it is quite natural that the εἲδος, μόρφη, or _forma substantialis_ of a body should often be referred to as the specific essence of the body, though of course the essence of the body really includes the material as well as the formal factor.

We may look at the essence of any being from two points of view. If we consider it as it is conceived actually to exist in the being, we call it the _physical essence_. If we consider it after the manner in which it is apprehended and defined by our intellects through generic and differentiating concepts, we call it the _metaphysical essence_. Thus, the essence of man conceived by the two defining concepts, “rational animal,” is the metaphysical essence; the essence of man as known to be composed of the two really distinct substantial principles, soul and body, is the physical essence. Understood in this way both are one and the same essence considered from different points of view—as existing in the actual order, and as conceived by the mind.(87)

The physical essence of any being, understood as the constitutive principle or principles from which all properties spring, is either _simple_ or _composite_ according as it is understood to consist of one such constitutive principle, or to result from the substantial union of two constitutive principles, a material and a formal. Thus, the essence of God, the essence of a purely spiritual being, the essence of the human soul, are physically simple; the essence of man, the essences of all corporeal beings, are physically composite.

According to our mode of conceiving, defining and classifying essences by means of the abstract generic and differential grades of being which we apprehend in them, all essences, even physically simple essences, are conceived as logically and metaphysically composite. Moreover we speak and think of their generic and differential factors as “material” and “formal” respectively, after the analogy of the composition of corporeal or physically composite essences from the union of two really distinct principles, matter and form; the analogy consisting in this, that as matter is the indeterminate principle which is determined and actuated by form, so the _generic_ concept is the indeterminate concept which is made definite and specific by that of the _differentia_.(88) But when we think of the _genus_ of any corporeal essence as “material,” and the _differentia_ as “formal,” we must not consider these “metaphysical parts” as really distinct; whereas the “physical parts” of a corporeal substance (such as man) are really distinct. The genus (animal), although a metaphysical part, expresses the _whole essence_ (man) in an indeterminate way; whereas the “matter” which is a physical part, does not express the whole essence of man, nor does the soul which is also a physical part, but only both together. Not a little error has resulted from the confusion of thought whereby _genus_ and _differentia_ have been regarded as material and formal constitutives in the literal sense of those expressions.

14. CHARACTERISTICS OF ABSTRACT ESSENCES.—When we consider the essences of things not as actually existing, but as intrinsically possible—the abstract, metaphysical essences, therefore—we find that when as objects of our thought they are analysed into their simplest constituents and compared or related with themselves and with one another they present themselves to our minds in these relations as endowed with certain more or less remarkable characteristics.

(_a_) In the first place, being abstract, they present themselves to the mind as being what they are independently of actual existence at any particular time or place. Their intelligibility is something apart from any relation to any actual time or place. Being intrinsically possible, they might exist at any time or place; but as possible, they are out of time and out of place—_detemporalized_ and _delocalized_, if we may be permitted to use such expressions.(89)

(_b_) Furthermore, since the intellect forms its notions of them, through the aid of the senses and the imagination, from actual realizations of themselves or their constituent factors, and since it understands them to be intrinsically possible, or free from intrinsic incompatibility of their constituent factors, it conceives them to be capable of indefinitely repeated actualizations throughout time and space—unless it sees some special reason to the contrary, as it does in the case of the Necessary Being, and (according to some philosophers) in the case of purely immaterial beings or pure spirits. That is to say it _universalizes_ them, and sees them to be capable of existing at any and every conceivable time and place. This relation of theirs to space is not likely to be confounded with the _immensity_ or _ubiquity_ of God. But their corresponding relation to time is sometimes described as _eternity_; and if it is so described it must be carefully distinguished from the _positive_ eternity of God, the Immutable Being. To distinguish it from the latter it is usually described as _negative_ eternity,—this indifference of the possible essence to actual existence at any particular point of time.

But apart from this relation which we conceive it as having to
existence in the order of actual reality, can we, or do we, or
must we conceive it as in itself an intrinsic possibility _from
all eternity_, in the sense that it _never began_ to be
intrinsically possible, and will never cease to be so? Must we
attribute to it a _positive_ eternity, not of course of actuality
or existence, but of _ideal_ being, as an object of thought to an
Eternally Existing Mind? What is this supposed eternal possibility
of the possible essence? Is it nothing actual: the possible as
such is nothing actual. But is it anything real? Has it only ideal
being—_esse ideale_ or _intentionale_? And has it this only in and
from the human mind, or independently of the human mind? And also
independently of the _actual_ essences from which the human mind
gets the data for its thought,—so that we must ascribe to it an
_eternal_ ideal being? To these questions we shall return
presently.

(_c_) Thirdly, essences considered apart from their actual existence, and compared with their own constitutive factors or with one another, reveal to the mind relations which the mind sees to be _necessary_, and which it formulates for itself in _necessary_ judgments,—judgments _in materia necessaria_. By virtue of the principle of identity an abstract essence is _necessarily_ what it is, what the mind conceives it to be, what the mind conceives as its definition. Man, as an object of thought, is _necessarily_ a rational animal, whether he actually exists or not. And if he is thought of as existing, he cannot at the same time be thought of as non-existing,—by the principle of contradiction. An existing man is necessarily an existing man,—by the principle of identity. These logical principles are rooted in the nature of reality, whether actual or possible, considered as an _object of thought_. There is thus a necessary relation between any complex object of thought and each of the constituent factors into which the mind can analyse it. And, similarly, there is a necessary negative relation—a relation of exclusion—between any object of thought and anything which the mind sees to be incompatible with that object as a whole, or with any of its constituent factors.

Again, the mind sees necessary relations between abstract essences compared with one another. Five and seven are _necessarily_ twelve. Whatever begins to exist actually _must_ have a cause. Contingent being, if such exists, is _necessarily_ dependent for its existence on some other actually existing being. If potential being is actualized it _must_ be actualized by actual being. The three interior angles of a triangle are _necessarily_ equal to two right angles. And so on.

But is the abstract essence itself—apart from all mental analysis of it, apart from all comparison of it with its constituent factors or with other essences—in any sense _necessary_? There is no question of its actual existence, but only of itself as an object of thought. Now our thought does not seem to demand _necessarily_, or have a _necessary_ connexion with, any particular object of which we do _de facto_ think. What we do think of is determined by our experience of _actual_ things. And the things which we conceive to be possible, by the exercise of our reason upon the data of our senses, memory and imagination, are determined as to their nature and number by our experience of actual things, even although they themselves can and do pass beyond the domain of actually experienced things. The only necessary object of thought is reality in general: for the exercise of the function of thought necessarily demands an object, and this object must be reality of some sort. Thought, as we saw, begins with actual reality. Working upon this, thought apprehends in it the foundations of those necessary relations and judgments already referred to. Considering, moreover, the actual data of experience, our thought can infer from these the actual existence of one Being Who must exist by a necessity of His Essence.

But, furthermore, must all the possible essences which the mind
does or can actually think of, be conceived as _necessarily
possible_ in the same sense in which it is suggested that they
must be conceived as eternally possible? To this question, too, we
shall return presently.

(_d_) Finally, possible essences appear to the mind as _immutable_, and consequently _indivisible_. This means simply that the relations which we establish between them and their constitutive factors are not only necessary but immutable: that if any constitutive factor of an essence is conceived as removed from it, or any new factor as added, we have no longer the original essence but some other essence. If “animal” is a being essentially embodying the two objective concepts of “organism” and “sentient,” then on removing either we have no longer the essence “animal”. So, too, by adding to these some other element compatible with them, _e.g._ “rational,” we have no longer the essence “animal,” but the essence “man”. Hence possible essences have been likened to numbers, inasmuch as if we add anything to, or subtract anything from, any given number, we have now no longer the original number but another.(90) This, too, is only an expression of the laws of identity and contradiction.

We might ask, however, whether, apart from analysis and comparison
of an abstract object of thought with its constitutive notes or
factors, such a possible essence is in itself _immutably_
possible. This is similar to the question whether we can or must
conceive such a possible essence as eternally and necessarily
possible.

15. GROUNDS OF THOSE CHARACTERISTICS.—In considering the grounds or reasons of the various characteristics just enumerated it may be well to reflect that when we speak of the _intrinsic possibility_ of a possible essence we conceive the latter as something complex, which we mentally resolve into its constitutive notes or factors or principles, to see if these are compatible. If they are we pronounce the essence intrinsically possible, if not we pronounce it intrinsically impossible. For our minds, absence of internal incompatibility in the content of our concept of any object is the test of its intrinsic possibility. Whatever fulfils this test we consider capable of existing. But what about the possibility of the notes, or factors, or principles themselves, whereby we define those essences, and by the union of which we conceive those essences to be constituted? How do we know that those abstract principles or factors—no one of which can actually exist alone, since all are abstract—can in certain combinations form _possible_ objects of thought? We can know this only because we have either experienced such objects as actual, or because we infer their possibility from objects actually experienced. And similarly our knowledge of what is impossible is based upon our experience of the actual. Since, moreover, our experience of the actual is finite and fallible, we may err in our judgments as to what essences are, and what are not, intrinsically possible.(91)

If now we ask ourselves what intelligible reason can we assign for the characteristics just indicated as belonging to possible essences, we must fix our attention first of all on the fundamental fact that the human intellect always apprehends its object _in an abstract condition_. It contemplates the essence apart from the existence in which the essence is subject to circumstances of time and place and change; it grasps the essence in a static condition as simply identical with itself and distinct from all else; it sees the essence as indifferent to existence at any place or time; reflecting then on the actualization of this essence in the existing order of things, it apprehends the essence as capable of indefinite actualizations (except in cases where it sees some reason to the contrary), _i.e._ it _universalizes_ the essence; comparing it with its constituent notes or elements, and with those of other essences, it sees and affirms certain relations (of identity or diversity, compatibility or incompatibility, between those notes or elements) as holding good _necessarily_ and _immutably_, and independently of the actual embodiment of those notes or elements in any object existing at any particular place or time. All these features of the relations between the constituents of abstract, possible essences, seem so far to be adequately accounted for by the fact that the intellect apprehends those essences _in the abstract_: the data in which it apprehends them being given to it through sense experience. What may be inferred from the fact that the human intellect has this power of abstract thought, is another question(92). But granting that it does apprehend essences in this manner, we seem to have in this fact a sufficient explanation of the features just referred to.

We have, however, already suggested other questions about the reality of those possible essences. Is their possibility, so far as known to us, explained by our experience of actual things? Or must we think them as eternally, necessarily and immutably possible? From the manner in which we must apprehend them, can we infer anything about the reality of an Eternal, Immutable, Necessary Intelligence, in whose Thought and Essence alone those essences, as apprehended by our minds, can find their ultimate ground and explanation? These are the questions we must now endeavour to examine.

16. POSSIBLE ESSENCES AS SUCH ARE SOMETHING DISTINCT FROM MERE LOGICAL BEING, AND FROM NOTHINGNESS.—There have been philosophers who have held that the actual alone is real, and only while it is actual; that a purely (intrinsically) possible essence as such is nothing real; that the actual alone is possible; that the purely possible as such is impossible. This view is based on the erroneous assumption that whatever is or becomes actual is so, or becomes so, by some sort of unintelligible fatalistic necessity. Apart from the fact that it is incompatible with certain truths of theism, such as the Divine Omnipotence and Freedom in creating, it also involves the denial of all real becoming or change, and the assertion that all actuality is eternal; for if anything becomes actual, it was previously either possible or impossible; if impossible, it could never become actual; if possible, then as possible it was something different from the impossible, or from absolute nothingness. Moreover, the intrinsically possible is capable of becoming actual, and may be actualized if there exists some actual being with power to actualize it; but absolute nothingness—or, in other words, the intrinsically impossible—cannot be actualized, even by Omnipotence; therefore the possible essence as such is something positive or real, as distinct from nothingness. Finally, intrinsically possible essences can be clearly distinguished from one another by the mind; but their negation which is pure non-entity or nothingness cannot be so distinguished. It is therefore clear that possible essences are in some true sense something positive or real. From which it follows that nothingness, in the strict sense, is not the mere absence or negation of actuality, but also the absence or negation of that positive or real something which is intrinsic possibility; in other words that nothingness in the strict sense means intrinsic impossibility.

Even those who hold the opinion just rejected—that the purely possible essence as such has no reality in any conceivable sense—would presumably admit that it is an object of human thought at all events; they would accord to it the being it has from the human mind which thinks it. It would therefore be an _ens rationis_ according to this view, having only the ideal being which consists in its being constituted and contemplated by the human mind. That it has the ideal being, the _esse ideale_ or _esse intentionale_, which consists in its being contemplated by the human mind as an object of thought, no one will deny. But a little reflection will show, firstly, that this ideal being is something more than the ideal being of an _ens rationis_, of a mere logical entity; and, secondly, that a possible essence must have some other ideal being than that which it has in the individual human mind.

The possible essence is not a mere logical entity; for the latter cannot be conceived as capable of existing apart from the human mind, in the world of actual existences (3), whereas the former can be, and is in fact, conceived as capable of such existence. Its ideal being in the human mind is, therefore, something other than that of a mere logical entity.

The ideal being which it has in the human mind as an object of thought is undoubtedly derived from the mind’s knowledge of actual things. We think of the essences of actually experienced realities apart from their actual existence. Thus abstracted, we analyse them, compare them, reason from them. By these processes we can not merely attain to a knowledge of the actual existence of other realities above and beyond and outside of our own direct and immediate intuitional experience, but we can also form concepts of multitudes of realities or essences as intrinsically possible, thus giving these latter an ideal existence in our own minds. Here, then, the question arises: Is this the only ideal being that can be ascribed to such essences? In other words, are essences intrinsically possible because _we think_ them as intrinsically possible? Or is it not rather the case that we think them to be intrinsically possible because they are intrinsically possible? Does our thought constitute, or does it not rather merely discover, their intrinsic possibility? Does the latter result from, or is it not rather presupposed by, our thought-activity? The second alternative suggested in each of these questions is the true one. As our thought is not the source of their actuality, neither is it the source of their intrinsic possibility. Solipsism is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the philosophy which would reduce all _actuality_ experienced by the individual mind to phases, or phenomena, or self-manifestations, of the individual mind itself as the one and only actuality. And no less absurd is the philosophy which would accord to all _intrinsically possible_ realities no being other than the ideal being which they have as the thought-objects of the individual human mind. The study of the _actual_ world of direct experience leads the impartial and sincere inquirer to the conclusion that it is in some true sense a manifestation of mind or intelligence: not, however, of his own mind, which is itself only a very tiny item in the totality of the actual world, but of one Supreme Intelligence. And in this same Intelligence the world of possible essences too will be found to have its original and fundamental ideal being.

17. POSSIBLE ESSENCES HAVE, BESIDES IDEAL BEING, NO OTHER SORT OF BEING OR REALITY PROPER AND INTRINSIC TO THEMSELVES.—Before inquiring further into the manner in which we attain to a knowledge of this Intelligence, and of the ideal being of possible essences in this Intelligence, we may ask whether, above and beyond such ideal being, possible essences have not perhaps from all eternity some being or reality proper and intrinsic to themselves; not indeed the actual being which they possess when actualized in time, but yet some kind of _intrinsic_ reality as distinct from the _extrinsic_ ideal being, or _esse intentionale_, which consists merely in this that they are objects of thought present as such to a Supreme Intelligence or Mind.

Some few medieval scholastics(93) contended that possible essences have from all eternity not indeed the existence they may receive by creation or production in time, but an intrinsic essential being which, by creation or production, may be transferred to the order of actual existences, and which, when actual existence ceases (if they ever receive it), still continues immutable and incorruptible: what these writers called the _esse essentiae_, as distinct from the _esse existentiae_, conceiving it to be intermediate between the latter on the one hand and mere ideal or logical being on the other, and hence calling it _esse diminutum_ or _secundum quid_. Examining the question from the standpoint of theism, these authors seem to have thought that since God understands these essences as possible from all eternity, and since this knowledge must have as its term or object something real and positive, these essences must have some real and proper intrinsic being from all eternity: otherwise they would be simply nothingness, and nothingness cannot be the term of the Divine Intelligence. But the obvious reply is that though possible essences as such are _nothing actual_ they must be distinguished as realities, capable of actually existing, from _absolute nothingness_; and that as thus distinguished from absolute nothingness they are really and positively intelligible to the Divine Mind, as indeed they are even to the human mind. To be intelligible they need not have actual being. They must, no doubt, be capable of having actual being, in order to be understood as realities: it is precisely in this understood capability that their reality consists, for the real includes not only what actually exists but whatever is capable of actual existence. Whatever is opposed to absolute nothingness is real; and this manifestly includes not only the actual but whatever is intrinsically possible.

Realities or essences which have not actual being have only ideal being; and ideal being means simply presence in some mind as an object of thought. Scholastic philosophers generally(94) hold that possible essences as such have no other being than this; that before and until such essences actually exist they have of themselves and in themselves no being except the ideal being which they have as objects of the Divine Intelligence and the virtual being they have in the Divine Omnipotence which may at any time give them actual existence. One convincing reason for this view is the consideration that if possible essences as such had from all eternity any proper and intrinsic being in themselves, God could neither create nor annihilate. For in that hypothesis essences, on becoming actual, would not be produced _ex nihilo_, inasmuch as before becoming actual they would in themselves and from all eternity have had their own proper real being; and after ceasing to be actual they would still retain this. But creation is the production of _the whole reality_ of actual being from nothingness; and is therefore impossible if the actual being is merely produced from an essence already real, _i.e._ having an eternal positive reality of its own. The same is true of annihilation. The theory of eternally existing uncreated _matter_ is no less incompatible with the doctrine of creation than this theory of eternally real and uncreated forms or essences.

Again, what could this supposed positive and proper reality of the possible essence be? If it is anything distinct from the mere ideal being of such an essence, as it is assumed to be, it must after all be _actual_ being of some sort, which would apparently have to be actualized again in order to have actual existence! Finally, this supposed eternal reality, proper to possible essences, cannot be anything uncreated. For whatever is uncreated is God; and since it is these supposed proper realities of possible essences that are made actual, and constitute the existing created universe, the latter would be in this view an actualization of the Divine Essence itself,—which is pantheism pure and simple. And neither can this supposed eternal reality, proper to possible essences, be anything created. For such creation would be eternal and necessary; whereas God’s creative activity is admitted by all scholastics to be essentially free; and although they are not agreed as to whether “creation from all eternity” (“_creatio ab aeterno_”) is possible, they are agreed that it is not a fact.

Possible essences as such are therefore nothing actual. Furthermore, as such they have in themselves no positive being. But they are not therefore unreal. They are positively intelligible as capable of actual existence, and therefore as distinct from logical entities or _entia rationis_ which are not capable of such existence. They are present as objects of thought to mind; and to some mind other than the individual human mind. About this ideal being which they have in this Mind we have now in the next place to inquire.

18. INFERENCES FROM OUR KNOWLEDGE OF POSSIBLE ESSENCES.—We have stated that an impartial study of the _actual_ world will lead to the conclusion that it is dependent on a Supreme Intelligence; and we have suggested that in this Supreme Intelligence also possible essences as such have their primary ideal being (16, 17). When the existence of God has been established—as it may be established by various lines of argument—from _actual_ things, we can clearly see, as will be pointed out presently, that in the Divine Essence all possible essences have the ultimate source of their possibility. But many scholastic philosophers contend that the nature and properties of possible essences, as apprehended by the human mind, furnish a distinct and conclusive argument for the existence of a Supreme Uncreated Intelligence.(95) Others deny the validity of such a line of reasoning, contending that it is based on misapprehension and misinterpretation of those characteristics.

All admit that it is not human thought that makes essences
possible: they are intelligible to the human mind because they are
possible, not _vice versa_.(96) For the human mind the immediate
source and ground of their intrinsic possibility and
characteristics is the fact that they are given to it in _actual_
experience while it has the power of considering them _apart from
their actual existence_.

But (1) are they not independent of experienced actuality, no less
than of the human mind, so that we are forced to infer from them
the reality of a Supreme Eternal Mind in which they have eternal
ideal being?

(2) Is not any possible essence (_e.g._ “water,” or “a triangle”)
so necessarily what it is that even if it never did and never will
exist, nay even were there no human or other finite mind to
conceive it, it would still be what it is (_e.g._ “a chemical
compound of oxygen and hydrogen,” or “a plane rectilinear
three-sided figure”)—so that there must be some Necessarily
Existing Intelligence in and from which it has this necessary
truth as a possible essence?(97) These essences, as known to us,
are so far from being grounded in, or explained by, the things of
our actual experience, that we rather regard the latter as
grounded in the former. Do we not consider possible essences as
the prototypes and exemplars to which actual things must conform
in order to be actual, in order to exist at all?(98)

(3) Finally, the relations which we apprehend as obtaining between
them, we see to be necessary and immutable relations. They embody
necessary truths which are for our minds the standards of all
truth. Such necessary truths cannot be grounded either in the
contingent human mind, or in the contingent and mutable actuality
of the things of our immediate experience. Therefore we can and
must infer from them the reality of a Necessary, Immutable Being,
of whose essence they must be imitations.

If, then, this ideal order of intrinsically possible essences is
logically and ontologically prior to the contingent actualizations
of any of them (even though it be posterior to them _in the order
of our knowledge_, which is based on _actual experience_), there
must be likewise ontologically prior to all contingent actualities
(including our own minds) some _Necessary Intelligence_ in which
this order of possible essences has its ideal being.

19. CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THOSE INFERENCES.—The validity of the
general line of argument indicated in the preceding paragraphs has
been seriously questioned. Among other criticisms the following
points have been urged(99):—

(1) _Actual_ things furnish the basis of irrefragable proofs of
the existence of God—the Supreme, Necessary, Eternal, Omniscient,
and Omnipotent Being. But we are here inquiring whether a mind
which has not yet so analysed actual being as to see how it
involves this conclusion, or a mind which abstracts altogether
from the evidence furnished by actual things for this conclusion,
can prove the existence of such a being from the separate
consideration of possible essences, their attributes and
relations. Now it is not evident that to such a mind possible
essences reveal themselves as having _eternal_ ideal being. Such a
mind is, no doubt, conscious that it is not itself the cause of
their possibility. But it sees that actual things _plus_ the
abstract character of its own thought account sufficiently for all
their features as it knows them. To the question: Is not their
ideal being _eternal_? it can only answer: That will depend on
whether the world of actual things can be shown to involve the
existence of an Eternal Intelligence. Until this is proved we
cannot say whether possible essences have any ideal being other
than that which they have in human minds.

(2) The actual things from which we get our concepts of possible
essences do not exist _necessarily_. But, granted their existence,
we know from them that certain essences are _de facto_ possible.
They are not _necessarily_ given to us as possible, any more than
actual things are necessarily given to us as actual. Of course,
when they are thought of at all, they are, as objects of thought,
necessarily and immutably identical with themselves, and related
to one another as mutually compatible or incompatible, etc. But
this necessity of relations, hypothetical as it is and contingent
on the mental processes of analysis and comparison, involved as it
is in the very nature of being and thought, and expressed as it is
in the principles of identity and contradiction, is just as true
of actual contingent essences as of possible essences;(100) and it
is something very different from the sort of necessity claimed for
possible essences by the contention that they must be conceived as
having ideal being _necessarily_. The ideal being they have in the
human mind is certainly not necessary: the human mind might never
have conceived these possible essences.

But must the human mind conceive a possible essence as having
_some_ ideal being _necessarily_? No; unless that mind has already
convinced itself, from a study of _actual_ things, that an
Eternal, Necessary, Omniscient Intelligence exists: to which, of
course, such essences would be eternally and necessarily present
as objects of thought. If the human mind had already reached this
conviction it could then see that “even if there were no human
intellect, things would still be true in relation to the Divine
Intellect. But if both intellects were, _per impossibile_,
conceived as non-existent truth would persist no longer.”(101)
Suppose, therefore, that it has not yet reached this conviction,
or abstracts altogether from the existence of God as known from
_actual_ things; and then, further, imagines the actual things of
its experience and all human intellects and finite intellects of
whatsoever kind as non-existent: must it still conceive possible
things as possible? No; possibility and impossibility, truth and
falsity will now have ceased to have any meaning. After such
attempted abstraction the mind would have before it only what
Balmes describes as “the abyss of nothing”. And Balmes is right in
saying that the mind is unable “to abstract all existence”. But
the reason of the inability is not, as Balmes contends, because
when it has removed actual things and finite minds there still
remains in spite of it a system or order of possible essences
which forces it to infer and posit the existence of an Eternal,
Necessary Mind as the source and ground of that order. The reason
rather is because the mind sees that the known _actual_ things,
from which it got all its notions of possible essences,
necessarily imply, as the only intelligible ground of their
actuality, the existence of a Necessary Being, in whose
Intelligence they must have been contained ideally, and in whose
Omnipotence they must have been contained virtually, from all
eternity. From contingent _actuality_, as known to it, the mind
can argue to the eternal actuality of Necessary Being, and to the
impossibility either of a state of absolute nothingness, or of an
order of purely possible things apart from all actuality.

(3) Of course, whether the mind has thus thought out the ultimate
implications of the actuality of experienced things or not, once
it has thought and experienced those things it cannot by any
effort banish the memory of them from its presence: they are there
still as objects of its thought even when it abstracts from their
actual existence. But if, while it has not yet seen that their
actuality implies the existence of a Necessary, Omniscient and
Omnipotent Being, it abstracts not only from their actual
existence but from the existence of all finite minds (itself
included), then in that state, so far as its knowledge goes, there
would be neither actual nor ideal nor possible being. Nor can the
fact that an ideal order of possible things still persists in its
own thought mislead it into concluding that such an ideal order
really persists in the hypothesis it has made. For it knows that
this ideal order still persists for itself simply because it
cannot “think itself away”. It sees all the time that if it could
effectively think itself away, this ideal order would have to
disappear with it, leaving nothing—so far as it knows—either
actual or possible. Mercier has some apposite remarks on this very
point. “From the fact,” he writes, “that those abstract essences,
grasped by our abstractive thought from the dawn of our reason,
have grown so familiar to us, we easily come to look upon them as
pre-existing archetypes or models of our thoughts and of things;
they form a fund of predicates by which we are in the habit of
interpreting the data of our experience. So, too, the
hypothetically necessary relations established by abstract thought
between them we come to regard as a sort of eternal system of
principles, endowed with a sort of legislative power, to which
created things and intelligences must conform. But they have
really no such pre-existence. The eternal pre-existence of those
essence-types, which Plato called the ‘intelligible world,’ the
τόπος νοητός, and the supposed eternal legislative power of their
relations, are a sort of mental optical illusion. Those abstract
essences, and the principles based upon them, are the products of
our mental activity working on the data of our actual experience.
When we enter on the domain of _speculative reflection_ ... they
are there before us; ... but we must not forget that reflection is
_consequent_ on the spontaneous thought-activity which—by working
abstractively on the actual data of sensible, contingent,
changeable, temporal realities—set them up there.... We know from
psychology how those ideal, abstract essence-types are formed....
But because we have no actual memory of their formation, which is
so rapid as practically to escape consciousness in spontaneous
thought, we are naturally prone to imagine that they are not the
product of our own mental action on the data of actual experience,
but that they exist in us, or rather above us, and independently
of us. We can therefore understand the psychological illusion
under which Plato wrote such passages as the following: ‘But if
anyone should tell me why anything is beautiful, either because it
has a blooming, florid colour, or figure, or anything else of the
kind, I dismiss all other reasons, for I am confounded by them
all; but I simply, wholly, and perhaps naïvely, confine myself to
this, that nothing else causes it to be beautiful, except either
the presence or communication of that abstract beauty, by whatever
means and in whatever way communicated; for I cannot yet affirm
with certainty, but only that by means of beauty all beautiful
things become beautiful (τῷ καλῷ τὰ καλὰ γίγνεται καλά). For this
appears to me the safest answer to give both to myself and others,
and adhering to this I think that I shall never fall [into
error].... And that by magnitude great things become great, and
greater things greater; and by littleness less things become
less.’(102) St. Augustine’s doctrine on the invariable laws of
numbers, on the immutable principles of wisdom, and on truth
generally, draws its inspiration from this Platonic
idealism.”(103)

But this Platonic doctrine, attributing to the abstract essences
conceived by our thought a reality independent both of our thought
and of the actual sense data from which directly or indirectly we
derive our concepts of them, is rejected as unsound by scholastics
generally. When we have proved from actual things that God exists,
and is the Intelligent and Free Creator of the actual world of our
direct experience, we can of course consider the Divine Intellect
as contemplating from all eternity the Divine Essence, and as
seeing therein the eternal archetypes or ideas of all actual and
possible essences. We may thus regard the Divine Mind as the
eternal τόπος νοητός, or _mundus intelligibilis_. This, of course,
is not Plato’s thought; it is what St. Augustine substituted for
Platonism, and very properly. But we must not infer, from this
truth, that when we contemplate possible essences, with all the
characteristics we may detect in them, we are contemplating this
_mundus intelligibilis_ which is the Divine Mind. This was the
error of the ontologists. They inferred that since possible
essences, as known by the human mind, have ideal being
independently of the latter and of all actual contingent reality,
the human mind in contemplating them has really an intuition of
them as they are seen by the Divine Intellect Itself in the Divine
Essence; so that, in the words of Gioberti, the _Primum
Ontologicum_, the Divine Being Himself, is also the _primum
logicum_, or first reality apprehended by human thought.(104)

Now those authors who hold that the ideal order of possible
essences contemplated by the human mind is seen by the latter, as
so contemplated, to have some being, some ideal being, really
independent of the human mind itself, and of the actual contingent
things from which they admit that the human mind derives its
knowledge of such essences,—these authors _do not hold_, but
_deny_, that this independent ideal being, which they claim for
these essences, is _anything Divine_, that it is the Divine
Essence as seen by the Divine Intellect to be imitable _ad
extra_.(105) Hence they cannot fairly be charged with the error of
ontologism.

Renouncing Plato’s exaggerated realism, and holding that our
knowledge of the ideal order of possible essences is derived by
our mind from its consideration of _actual_ things, they yet hold
that this ideal order is seen to have some sort of being or
reality independent both of the mind and of actual things.(106)
This is not easy to understand. When we ask, Is this supposed
independent being (or reality, or possibility) of possible
essences the ideal being they have in the Divine mind?—we are told
that it is not;(107) but that it is something from which we can
_infer, by reasoning_, this eternal, necessary, and immutable
ideal being of these same essences in the Divine Mind.

The considerations urged in the foregoing paragraphs will,
however, have shown that the validity of this line of reasoning
from possible essences to the reality of an Eternal, Divine,
Immutable Intelligence is by no means evident or free from
difficulties. Of course, when the existence of God has been proved
from actual things, the conception of the Divine Intelligence and
Essence as the ultimate source of all possible reality, no less
than of all actual reality, will be found to shed a great deal of
new light upon the intrinsic possibility of possible essences.
Since, however, our knowledge of the Divine is merely analogical,
and since God’s intuition of possible essences, as imitations of
His own Divine Essence, completely transcends our comprehension,
and is totally different from our abstractive knowledge of such
essences, our conception of the manner in which these essences are
related to the Divine Nature and the Divine Attributes, must be
determined after the analogy of the manner in which our own minds
are related to these essences.

20. ESSENCES ARE INTRINSICALLY POSSIBLE, NOT BECAUSE GOD CAN MAKE THEM EXIST ACTUALLY; NOR YET BECAUSE HE FREELY WILLS THEM TO BE POSSIBLE; NOR BECAUSE HE UNDERSTANDS THEM AS POSSIBLE; BUT BECAUSE THEY ARE MODES IN WHICH THE DIVINE ESSENCE IS IMITABLE _ad extra_.—(_a_) The ultimate source of the _extrinsic_ possibility of all contingent realities is the Divine Omnipotence: just as the proximate source of the extrinsic possibility of a statue is the power of the sculptor to educe it from the block of wood or marble. But just as the power of the sculptor presupposes the _intrinsic_ possibility of the statue, so does the Divine Omnipotence presuppose the intrinsic possibility of all possible things. It is not, as William of Ockam († 1347), a scholastic of the decadent period, erroneously thought, because God can create things that such things are intrinsically possible, but rather because they are intrinsically possible He can create them.

(_b_) Not less erroneous is the _voluntarist_ theory of Descartes, according to which possible essences are intrinsically possible because God freely willed them to be possible.(108) The _actuality_ of all created things depends, of course, on the free will of God to create them; but that possible essences are what they are, and are related to each other necessarily as they are, because God has willed them to be such, is absolutely incredible. Descartes seems to have been betrayed into this strange error by a false notion of what is requisite for the absolute freedom and independence of the Divine Will: as if this demanded that God should be free to will, _e.g._ that two _plus_ two be five, or that the radii of a circle be unequal, or that creatures be independent of Himself, or that blasphemy be a virtuous act! The intrinsic possibility of essences is _not_ dependent on the Free Will of God; the actualization of possible essences is; but God can will to actualize only such essences as He sees, from comprehending His own Divine Essence, to be intrinsically possible. But it derogates in no way from the supremacy of the Divine Will to conceive its free volition as thus consequent on, and illumined by, the Divine Knowledge; whereas it is incompatible with the wisdom and sanctity of God, as well as inconceivable to the human mind, that the necessary laws of thought and being—such as the principles of contradiction and identity, the principle of causality, the first principles of the moral order—should be what they are simply because God has freely willed them to be so, and might therefore have been otherwise.

From the fact that we have no direct intuition of the Divine
Being, some philosophers have concluded that all speculation on
the relation of God to the world of our direct experience is
necessarily barren and fruitless. This is a phase of agnosticism;
and, like all error, it is the exaggeration of a truth: the truth
being that while we may reach real knowledge about the Divine
Nature and attributes by such speculation, we can do so only on
condition that we are guided by analogies drawn from God’s
creation, and remember that our concepts, as applied to God, are
analogical (2).