Appendix II to Part II

APPENDIX II Nore on THE SIMPLICITY oF THE ANALocIcAL Notion or BEING

We have shown on various occasions (especially supra, pp. 214-220) that the concept of being does not possess absolute unity, but only a unity of proportionality, because what it designates is not absolutely the same, but proportionately alike in the necessary being and the contingent substantial being and the diverse accidents of this latter. When we define being in general as “that which is or can be,” or more precisely as “that the act of which is to exist, id cujus actus est esse,” even then this relation to existence, being essentially varied, cannot be thought of without at least a confused thought of the members of the proportionality in which it is realized. God is to His Necessary existence as created substance is to its contingent existence, as accident is to its existence which is dependent on a subject.

How then can we maintain what we have already said (Vol. I, p. 140, n. 19), namely, that the notion of being is the simplest of all notions, and therefore it cannot be a false expression of the real or be the reunion of incompossible elements?

The reconciliation of these two theses, already referred to (p. 214), is not so difficult as at first it appears to be.

We must first of all distinguish between two simplicities, the one positive, the other negative, which are in opposition to each other as perfect and imperfect. These are the simplicity of God, pure Act, and the simplicity of prime matter, which is not composed of distinct elements but which is susceptible of receiving every form and constituting all bodies. The simplicity of the general notion of being approaches this latter, because this notion is not composed of other ideas; but, since it has to be predicated of the most diverse kinds of beings, it cannot denote in them something absolutely similar, but only proportionately so.

The idea of being is the simplest of all ideas, because it does not presuppose any other and is not composed of previous notions; on the contrary, it enters into the constitution or comprehension of all other ideas, into that of truth, goodness, beauty, substance, cause, humanity, etc, The idea of humanity, for instance, is composed of the ideas of animality and rationality; it is really and truly by this genus and specific difference that man is defined, whereas being in general cannot be defined in this way. It transcends (sranscend:t) all the genera and the differentiae, and that is why it is called a transcendental notion. The comprehension of this latter is all the more simple and restricted as it is the more universal in its extension. That it may be applied to all beings the most diverse, from the accidents of a grain of dust up to God, this idea must denote the minimum that they have in common.

Now, it is precisely this minimum, signified by the notion of being in general, that is not found in all of them in the same way, but according to modes which are proportionately alike. God is of Himself; the grain of dust és, not of itself but in itself; such of its qualities is, not of itself, nor in itself, but in it. Being as such is therefore essentially varied or analogical; it cannot be perfectly abstracted from its analogues; in other words, we cannot think of being without thinking confusedly of the diverse members of the proportionality, of necessary being, contingent being, the accidental modalities of the latter. On the contrary, an idea which is not analogical but univocal, like that of humanity, expresses a characteristic which is specifically the same in all men and which can be thought of entirely apart from them.

There is then no contradiction in saying that the idea of being is the simplest of all ideas and that it has, nevertheless, only a unity of proportionality; moreover, the second assertion is derived from the first.

To sum up: The simplest idea is that which is not composed of previous notions; there cannot, therefore, be any accidental error in its formation; it cannot be a false expression of the real.

Moreover, from the mere fact that the notion of being is the sim-

1See St. Thomas, Ia, q. 85, a. 6: “Whether the intellect can be false.” “Concerning the quiddity of a thing, the intellect, properly speaking, is not at fault... . The intellect, however, may be accidentally deceived in the quiddity of composite things (on the part of the composition affecting the definition). . . . As regards simple objects not subject to composite definitions, we cannot be deceived unless, indeed, we understand nothing whatever about them, as is said in Metaph., LX, ch. x (lect. 11).”

plest and the least comprehensive, it must have the widest extension. Now it cannot be extended to beings the most different and infinitely diverse, denoting in them an absolutely identical formality, but merely that in which they are proportionately altke.

We must say as much of the notion of unity. It, too, is analogical, and can denote only a similarity of proportion, as that which exists between such diverse unities as those of God, the human soul, the negative unity of matter, the accidental unity of a heap of stones, or, in the abstract sense, between the unities of a species, a genus, an analogical notion.

This is Cajetan’s profound statement in the passages we have already quoted (p. 214), De analogia nominum, ch. vi: “The analogue, as previously stated, is predicated of the analogates, and is not only in name common to them, but is proportionally so in the uniqueness of its concept . . . it is one not accidentally, or by aggregation, as a heap of stones, but it is directly evident that the analogue is also proportionally one.” Likewise, in his De conceptu entis, he says: “That being is also the simplest of concepts agrees with what has been said, for since simplicity is opposed to composition, aiso that which is one by analogy is not one by any composition.”

For a right understanding of this, we must remember that there are two kinds of simplicity: that of the idea of being in general is not the simplicity that belongs to God; they are opposed to each other as are the imperfect and sovereign perfection, as are the simplicity of the idiot and that of the divine intellect. The simplicity of the divine nature is the most absolute unity, so eminent that it subsists even in the Trinity of Persons. On the other hand, the simplicity of the general notion of being, though excluding all composition, denotes in the different beings but a unity of proportionality, and that is what is meant when we say that it is an analogical notion. It is the characteristic of Pantheism to confound these two unities that are so different, one of them representing the starting-point of our intellectual knowledge, and the other its culmination which is the object of the beatific vision,