Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)Balmes, Jaime Luciano
Philosophy
Fundamental Philosophy, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Balmes, Jaime Luciano
Philosophy, Spanish
Both are requisite to science; if the foundation of intrinsic
possibility be wanting, the condition of existence cannot come in; and
if, admitting the possibility, we omit the condition, science has no
object.
56. We would remark, for the better understanding of this whole
subject, that we do not, in affirming or denying the relations of
beings represented in God, treat of what these beings are in God, but
of what they would be in themselves were they to exist. In God, all are
the same God; for all that is in God, is identical with God. If, then,
we consider things only as they are in him, we shall have God, not the
things, for object. Certain it is, that in God is the foundation, or
the sufficient reason, of geometrical truths: but geometry does not
consider them such as they are in God, but such as they are or may
be realized. In God, there are neither lines nor dimensions of any
kind; he, therefore, is not the object of geometry properly so called.
Geometrical truths have in him an objective value or representative
value, but not subjective; we should otherwise be obliged to say that
God is extensive.
57. Here, then, is seen that what we said above in the place cited,
does not conflict with what we have here established; and that to make
God the foundation of all possibility, does not exclude the scientific
necessity of the condition of existence.
58. We will, in order to place this beyond all doubt, present the
question under another aspect, by showing that when God knows finite
truths, he sees in them this condition likewise: "If they exist." God
knows the truth of this proposition: "Triangles of equal base and
altitude are of equal superfices:" this is true as well in the eyes of
infinite intelligence, as in ours; were it not thus the proposition
would not be true in itself, and we should be in error. This being so,
there are in God, who is most simple being, no true figures, although
he has the intellectual perception of them. The cognition, then,
of God, in what relates to finite things, refers to their possible
existence, and consequently involves the condition that they exist.
The cognition of God does not refer to their purely ideal
representation, but to their actual or possible reality; when God
knows a truth of finite beings, he does not know it from the sole
representation of those truths which he has in himself, but from that
which they would be were they to exist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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