equality has such slender influence over most powerful demonstration, or the mother-syllogism, it has still less over the dependent syllogisms. But, as yet, reference has been made only to the first and most perfect species of demonstration (Propter Quid-dióri), wherein the attribute is demonstrated of the subject by means of the cause. Should the examination be transferred to the second species (Quodőrt), wherein causality is demonstrated of the subject by means of the effect; the canon of equality would be entirely at fault. Consequently, there is no likelihood of its being the ultimate Principle in order of reduction.

NOTE. It is worth noticing that, in this last proof of the Thesis, the term, equality, is used analogically. The logical and metaphysical wholes are regarded as quantities; and so, as subject to equality and inequality.

PROPOSITION CXXIII.

The so-called Principle,-Being creates existences, or, as it has been otherwise expressed,-God creates the world, is not the ultimate in order of reduction.

PROLEGOMENON.

Gioberti has given us the Judgment, which forms the subject of the present Thesis, under its first expression. The modification, or second expression, of it as given in the Enunciation is due to Father Romano, and was afterwards adopted by the American writer, Mr. Brownson. All three maintained that this Judgment, under one or other of its forms, is the ultimate Principle which underlies all thought.

THE PROPOSITION IS PROVED BY THE FOLLOWING ARGUMENTS:

I. If the aforesaid Judgment were the ultimate Principle of which we are in search, it would follow that there could be no science and, so far at least as man is concerned, no necessary truth. For, creation is an act of free-will; and, therefore, contingent in its results. Consequently, the Judgment in question would be contingent and synthetical. But no derivative Judgment can rise above its source. Consequently, all human Judgments would be contingent; and, out of such concepts, the formation of science is impossible. For science deals only with the necessary and

eternal.

II. The above argument is further confirmed. Science has

nothing to do with created existences, as such; because they too, like the creative act which they presuppose, are contingent. It is not, therefore, possible that the ultimate Principle of scientific thought should be a Judgment wherein created existences, as such, form part of the predicate.

III. The truth of the preceding arguments may be presented under an opposite point of view. In the hypothesis that such Judgment were the ultimate basis of thought, created existences would be necessary, immutable, eternal. They would, consequently, be God; so that the predicate in the said Judgment would be identical with the subject. The Antecedent is thus proved. A first Principle must be analytical; i.e. the idea of the predicate must be essentially contained in the idea of the subject. Wherefore, in the present instance, the idea of created existences, or of the world, must be essentially contained in the idea of Being, or of God. This once admitted, creation and created existences are essential to God. But that which is essential to God, is God. Why not add that, in this case, the Principle of identity would have the prior claim; seeing that the Judgments in question would be resolvable into it?

IV. The theory in question is repugnant to common sense. No one could be persuaded that, when a child, for instance, first forms its confused concept of Being or Thing, there is lurking in its mind, underneath this simplest and most vague idea, the Judgment that God creates the world. So, again, if a farmer should pronounce that The crop of hay this year has been a very fine one, is it not overmuch to require us to believe that underneath this assertion there lies, however implicitly, that other Judgment, Being creates Existences? To take a fresh illustration from another and higher order of truths: We form the Judgment that Being is one, true, good. Where is the necessity, whence the opportuneness, of introducing the concept of creation here? Surely, it is possible to conceive of God as Being, as One, as True, as Good; quite irrespective of any, even virtual, concept of a creation. Here, however, an objection might possibly be made; yet of such little worth, that one is half ashamed to notice it. It may be urged that the child cannot think thing or any other thought, unless itself has been previously created. Similarly, the farmer cannot pronounce judgment on the crops, save on the presupposition that he as well as the crops have been created. The same holds good in the case of the man who

judges God to be Being, the One, the True, the Good. But who can fail to see that there is, in such an objection, a confusion between the real and the conceptual order? In order to think, of course, I must first be. In order that I may be able to judge about crops of hay, they must first be. But the existence of the one or the other, though a prerequisite or a necessary condition, does not enter into the formal act of the Judgment. The two are preliminary, if you will; but they are not elements in the concept itself. In order that a man may have a draught of water, recourse must be had (we will suppose) to the pump; yet, for all that, he does not swallow the pump.

V. The theory under discussion supposes an intuitive knowledge of God in the actual order. It is, therefore, based on a false hypothesis. All our knowledge of God, of His Existence, Nature, Attributes, (apart from a supernatural revelation), is arguitive,— a deduction from the things that are seen. We know of Him only through His works. All our ideas, in the actual order, are primitively derived from sensile perception; and they cannot break entirely loose from their source. We are utterly unable, as things stand, to intue the purely spiritual.

VI. The theory in question is based upon a philosophical error. There are two ideas of Being, as separate from each other as are the two poles. The one is that most general, confused, uncontaining, notion of Being, which is conceived by the child when first it begins to think. That same idea comes afterwards into the possession of the philosopher, and is rendered clear and explicit. Yet, spite of all, it is a Transcendental; and includes the Creator and the creature, the Infinite and finite,-the Necessary and the contingent, -the Eternal and temporal, under (if one may use the expression in such connection) a common denominator. The concept has closest affinity with the whole of extension, while going beyond it. But there is another idea of Being, which most nearly resembles the metaphysical whole, or whole of intension, though going beyond it. For it includes all reality within itself in infinite perfection; and only is not the metaphysical whole, because it is not specific, but singular and individual. Yet is it a singular that includes all genera and species virtually and eminently, but essentially, in itself. It is the idea of 'I AM WHO AM.' Now the theory, of which we are at present speaking, confounds the one idea of Being with the other. The former, it is true, is first and last in all

human thought; the latter is the outcome of an elaborate process of deduction. The one is an intuition of the understanding; the other is a conclusion of reason.

PROPOSITION CXXIV.

The Principle of contradiction is the ultimate in order of reduction.

PROLEGOMENON.

That Principle which is ultimate in order of reduction is first in order of thought and in genesis of science.

THE PROPOSITION IS THUS DECLARED.

I. The ultimate, or most universal, Principle must necessarily embrace the most universal object; and the first Principle will exhibit this most universal object in its primary relation. Now, by common consent, Being as such (i.e. independently of, and prior to, its three attributes, or passions) is the most universal object and, consequently, the most universal subject of a Judgment. It remains, then, to discover the primary relation (so to say) of Being. It has been already pointed out in the thirty-second Proposition, that, as St. Thomas teaches, first in order of scientific thought comes the idea of Being, then of Not-Being; thence proceeds the idea of division; from which, in turn, the idea of unity. The idea of unity gives birth to that of distinction; and from these last is generated the idea of multitude. It has been further shown, in the third Book, that the two other Transcendental attributes of truth and goodness are consequent upon unity in scientific genesis. To repeat, then: Being is the first and most universal subject of thought; and the ultimate Principle in order of reduction, or the first Principle in the order of philosophic cognition, will be that Judgment which represents Being in its primary relation. Yet, if this be true, it would seem as though the 'Principle' of identity must be, after all, the ultimate of which we are in search. For is not the first relation discoverable in Being its relation of sameness to itself? No, certainly not; for the idea of identity, as we have already seen, is consequent upon that of unity, and is really nothing else than a reflex concept of

this latter. Neither can there be any, even conceptual, relation; for relation postulates two distinct terms. What, then, is the primary relation of Being? Evidently its relation to Not-Being, whence arises division and, as a consequence, the first possibility of two terms of thought. To this, however, it may be objected, that the second term (which is Not-Being) is conceptual only, not real; whereas one would think that the ultimate philosophical Principle must postulate two real and really distinct terms. Nevertheless, on closer inspection it will appear that, though the notion of Not-Being is formally and explicitly a purely conceptual idea in itself; yet, in its relation to Being, it has a real foundation. It, in fact, assumes the form of a privative. For, when it is affirmed, according to the Principle of contradiction, that It is impossible for an entity at once to have essence and not to have essence; or that It is impossible for an entity at one and the same time to exist and not to exist, these two Judgments are equivalent to the intuitive cognition, that Nothing can at once possess and be without the same reality. The Principle of contradiction, therefore, is the ultimate in order of reduction. Such is the teaching of the Angelic Doctor. 'In those objects,' he remarks, which are subject to human apprehension, there is discovered a certain order. For that which is first subject to our apprehension, is Being; the intuition of which is included in all the possible objects of apprehension. Wherefore, the first indemonstrable Principle is, that it is impossible at once to affirm and deny; which has its foundation in the concept of Being and of Not-Being. And on this Principle all the rest are based 1.' And, again: 'In these Principles' (i.e. in self-evident Principles which belong to the philosophy of natural reason 2) 'there is discovered a certain order; so that some are implicitly contained in others. Just as all Principles are reduced to this one, as to the first: It is impossible at once to affirm and deny 3'

1 'In his autem quae in apprehensione hominum cadunt, quidam ordo invenitur. Nam illud quod primo cadit sub apprehensione est ens, cujus intellectus includitur in omnibus quaecunque quis apprehendit. Et ideo primum principium indemonstrabile est, quod non est simul affirmare et negare; quod fundatur supra rationem entis et non entis. Et super hoc principio omnia alia fundantur, ut dicit Philosophus in iv. Metaph.' I-2a0 xciv, 2, c.

2Sicut principia per se nota in doctrina quae per rationem naturalem habetur.' 2-2a0 i, 7, c.

3. In quibus principiis ordo quidam invenitur, ut quaedam in aliis implicite contineantur. Sicut omnia principia reducuntur ad hoc sicut ad primum: Impossibile est simul affirmare et negare.' Ibidem.