4. REAL BEING AND IDEAL BEING.—The latter of these expressions has a multiplicity of kindred meanings. We use it here in the sense of “being _known_,” _i.e._ to signify the “esse _intentionale_,” the mental presence, which, in the scholastic theory of knowledge, an entity of whatsoever kind, whether real or logical, must have in the mind of the knower in order that he be aware of that entity. A mere logical entity, as we have seen, has and can have no other mode of being than this which consists in being an object of the mind’s awareness. All real being, too, when it becomes an object of any kind of human cognition whatsoever—of intellectual thought, whether direct or reflex; of sense perception, whether external or internal—must obtain this sort of mental presence or mental existence: thereby alone can it become an “objectum _cognitum_”. Only by such mental mirroring, or reproduction, or reconstruction, can reality become so related and connected with mind as to reveal itself to mind. Under this peculiar relation which we call cognition, the mind, as we know from psychology and epistemology, is not passive: if reality revealed itself immediately, as it is, to a purely passive mind (were such conceivable), the existence of error would be unaccountable; but the mind is not passive: under the influence of the reality it forms the intellectual concept (the _verbum mentale_), or the sense percept (the _species sensibilis expressa_), in and through which, and by means of which, it attains to its knowledge of the real. But prior (ontologically) to this _mental_ existence, and as partial cause of the latter, there is the _real_ existence or being, which reality has independently of its being known by any individual human mind. Real being, then, as distinguished here from ideal being, is that which exists or can exist extramentally, whether it is known by the human mind or not, _i.e._ whether it exists also mentally or not.