The Essence of Objects

The mind sees neither the essence nor the existence of objects by considering its own perfections.

Only God sees them in this manner.

The fourth opinion is that the mind needs only itself to perceive objects; and that it can, by considering itself and its own perfections, discover all the things that are outside.

It is certain that the soul sees within itself, and without ideas, all the sensations and all the passions of which it is capable—pleasure, pain, cold, heat, colors, sounds, odors, tastes, its love, its hatred, its joy, its sadness, and the others; because all the sensations and all the passions of the soul represent nothing outside itself that resembles them, and they are only modifications of which a mind is capable [16].

But the difficulty is to know whether the ideas that represent something outside the soul and that resemble it in some way—such as the ideas of the sun, a house, a horse, a river, etc.—are only modifications of the soul; so that the mind needs only itself to represent to itself all the things that are outside it.

There are persons who do not hesitate to affirm that the soul, being made to think, has within itself—I mean, by considering its own perfections—everything it needs to perceive objects; because in effect, being more noble than all the things it conceives distinctly, one can say that it contains them in some way eminently, as the School speaks—that is to say, in a more noble and more elevated manner than they are in themselves. They claim that superior things comprehend in this manner the perfections of inferior ones. Thus, being the noblest of the creatures they know, they flatter themselves that they have within themselves, in a spiritual manner, everything that is in the visible world, and that by modifying themselves diversely they can perceive everything the human mind is capable of knowing. In a word, they want the soul to be like an intelligible world that comprehends in itself everything that the material and sensible world comprehends, and even infinitely more.

But it seems to me that it is rather bold to wish to maintain this thought. It is, if I am not mistaken, natural vanity, the love of independence, and the desire to resemble Him who comprehends in Himself all beings, that muddles our mind and leads us to imagine that we possess what we do not have. Do not say that you are your own light, says Saint Augustine [17], for only God is His own light and can, by considering Himself, see everything He has produced and can produce [18].

It is indubitable that only God existed before the world was created, and that He could not have produced it without knowledge and without idea; that consequently these ideas that God had of it are not different from Himself; and that thus all creatures—even the most material and most earthly—are in God, although in a wholly spiritual manner that we cannot comprehend. God therefore sees within Himself all beings, by considering His own perfections, which represent them to Him. He also perfectly knows their existence, because, all depending on His will to exist, and being unable to be ignorant of His own wills, it follows that He cannot be ignorant of their existence; and consequently God sees in Himself not only the essence of things, but also their existence.

But it is not the same with created minds: they cannot see in themselves either the essence of things or their existence. They cannot see their essence in themselves, since, being very limited, they do not contain all beings, as God, who can be called the universal being, or simply “He who is” [19], as He names Himself. Since then the human mind can know all beings, and infinite beings, and does not contain them, this is a certain proof that it does not see their essence in itself; for the mind does not see only now one thing and now another successively; it even actually perceives the infinite, although it does not comprehend it, as we have said in the preceding chapter. So that, not being actually infinite nor capable of infinite modifications at the same time, it is absolutely impossible that it sees in itself what is not there. It does not therefore see the essence of things by considering its own perfections or by modifying itself diversely.

It also does not see their existence in itself, because they do not depend on its will to exist, and because the ideas of these things can be present to the mind even though they do not exist; for everyone can have the idea of a golden mountain without there being a golden mountain in nature; and although one relies on the reports of one’s senses to judge the existence of objects, nevertheless reason does not assure us that we should always believe our senses, since we clearly discover that they deceive us. When a man, for example, has the blood very heated, or simply when he sleeps, he sometimes sees before his eyes fields, battles, and similar things, which however are not present and which perhaps never were. It is therefore indubitable that it is not in itself nor by itself that the mind sees the existence of things, but that in this it depends on something else.