thought-objects of the individual human mind. The study of the _actual_ world of direct experience leads the impartial and sincere inquirer to the conclusion that it is in some true sense a manifestation of mind or intelligence: not, however, of his own mind, which is itself only a very tiny item in the totality of the actual world, but of one Supreme Intelligence. And in this same Intelligence the world of possible essences too will be found to have its original and fundamental ideal being. 17. POSSIBLE ESSENCES HAVE, BESIDES IDEAL BEING, NO OTHER SORT OF BEING OR REALITY PROPER AND INTRINSIC TO THEMSELVES.—Before inquiring further into the manner in which we attain to a knowledge of this Intelligence, and of the ideal being of possible essences in this Intelligence, we may ask whether, above and beyond such ideal being, possible essences have not perhaps from all eternity some being or reality proper and intrinsic to themselves; not indeed the actual being which they possess when actualized in time, but yet some kind of _intrinsic_ reality as distinct from the _extrinsic_ ideal being, or _esse intentionale_, which consists merely in this that they are objects of thought present as such to a Supreme Intelligence or Mind. Some few medieval scholastics(93) contended that possible essences have from all eternity not indeed the existence they may receive by creation or production in time, but an intrinsic essential being which, by creation or production, may be transferred to the order of actual existences, and which, when actual existence ceases (if they ever receive it), still continues immutable and incorruptible: what these writers called the _esse essentiae_, as distinct from the _esse existentiae_, conceiving it to be intermediate between the latter on the one hand and mere ideal or logical being on the other, and hence calling it _esse diminutum_ or _secundum quid_. Examining the question from the standpoint of theism, these authors seem to have thought that since God understands these essences as possible from all eternity, and since this knowledge must have as its term or object something real and positive, these essences must have some real and proper intrinsic being from all eternity: otherwise they would be simply nothingness, and nothingness cannot be the term of the Divine Intelligence. But the obvious reply is that though possible essences as such are _nothing actual_ they must be distinguished as realities, capable of actually existing, from _absolute nothingness_; and that as thus distinguished from absolute nothingness they are really and positively intelligible to the Divine Mind, as indeed they are even to the human mind. To be intelligible they need not have actual being. They must, no doubt, be capable of having actual being, in order to be understood as realities: it is precisely in this understood capability that their reality consists, for the real includes not only what actually exists but