Fundamental Philosophy (Vol. 1&2). Jaime Luciano Balmes

So far as the problem of intelligence is concerned, it makes no difference that these are produced externally, with an existence distinct from the intellectual representation. As Vico himself explains, human reason knows what it constructs in a purely ideal world; and God knows the Word which he begets, although the Word is not without the divine essence, but is identified with it.

      300. The Neapolitan philosopher, not satisfied with applying his system to human reason, makes it applicable to all intelligences, not excepting the divine; although with a praiseworthy regard for religion, he endeavors to reconcile his ideological doctrine with the dogmas of Christianity. Truly, the problems of intelligence cannot be completely solved without greatly cumulating them. To trace the footsteps of human reason does not suffice to make us know the human understanding; we must, moreover, propose the general problem of intelligence itself, now limited, like our own, to faint glimmerings, now dilating itself in a sea of light over the regions of infinity. The sublime words, with which St. John commences his Gospel, besides the august truth taught by divine inspiration, involve transcendental doctrines of an importance higher than can be found in the words of any man, even if considered under a merely philosophical point of view.

      When Vico identifies truth with the made, he is aware that he must, according to a dogma of our religion, distinguish between what is created and what is uncreated. What is created is made; what is uncreated, begotten. He admires the divine elegance of the Holy Scriptures in calling the wisdom of God, in which the ideas of all things are contained, and the elements of ideas themselves, his Word: but when he would explain the conception of the Word, his expressions are very inexact; he would have us understand, so it would seem, that the Word only results from the elements known and contained in the divine omnipotence. "In this Word," he says, "the true is the comprehension of all the elements of this universe; and it might form infinite worlds: from these elements, known and contained in the divine omnipotence, is formed the Word real and absolute, known by the Father from all eternity, and by him begotten also from all eternity."[28]

      If the author means that the Word is conceived by the mere knowledge of what is contained in the divine omnipotence, his assertion is false; if he does not, his mode of speaking is inexact.

      St. Thomas asks whether any relation to creature be contained in the name of the Word: "utrum in nomine Verbi importetur respectus ad creaturam;" and he resolves the question with admirable laconism and solidity. "I reply that in the Word relation to creature is contained. For God, by knowing himself, knows every creature. The Word, therefore, conceived in the mind, is representative of all actually understood by it. Wherefore there are in us different words according to the different things we understand. But because God by one act understands both himself and all things, his only Word is expressive not only of the Father, but also of creatures. And as the science of God is, with respect to himself, cognition, but with respect to creatures, cognition and cause; so the Word of God is expressive only of what is in God the Father, but both expressive and productive of creatures; and this is why it is said in the Thirty-second Psalm: "He said, and they were made;" because the productive reason of those things, which the Father makes, is contained in the Word."[29]

      We see by this passage, that, according to St. Thomas, the Word also expresses creatures, and that it is conceived not only by the cognition of them, but, and this too, primarily, by the cognition of the divine essence. Elsewhere, the Holy Doctor says: "The Father, by understanding himself, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and all other things included in His science, conceives the Word, in such a manner that the whole Trinity is expressed in the Word, and also all creatures."[30]

      301. Another doctrine of St. Thomas is also opposed to this system of Vico, according to whom, the intellect knows what it makes, and that only, and because it makes it; and the made being the sole criterion of the true, the true and the made are convertible. Vico applies this doctrine to the divine intelligence, only substituting begotten for made; but this inverts the order of ideas, since, according to our mode of conceiving, God does not understand because he begets, but begets because he understands: intelligence must be conceived before the Word can be conceived. "In whoever understands," says St. Thomas, "by the very fact of understanding, something proceeds within him, which is the conception of the thing understood coming from the intellective power, and proceeding from its knowledge."[31]

      This doctrine of St. Thomas confirms the opinion, expressed above, concerning the impossibility of explaining the intellectual act solely by production. To produce in the intellectual order, it is evidently necessary to understand; and consequently in the initial moment of every intelligence, the productive act cannot be performed without intuition of the object. St. Thomas speaks in this same sense of divine things, as much as one can so speak; he does not found the divine intelligence on the generation of the Word, but rather the generation of the Word on the divine intelligence. God, according to St. Thomas, begets the Word because he understands, but does not understand because he begets. St. Thomas comprises in the Word the expression of every thing contained in God; for he presupposes the divine intelligence, by which he makes it possible to speak or utter the Word. This, then, is the order of conceptions; understanding, object understood, word proceeding from the act of understanding, whereby the intelligent being expresses, or says to itself, the thing understood. These ideas applied to God, are: God the Father understanding; divine essence and all that it contains understood; Word or Son generated by this intellectual act, expressive of all that is contained in the generative act.

      302. We have no disposition to blame Vico; we have only endeavored to mark the inexactness of his words, doing him, at the same time, the justice to believe that he understood things differently from what he explained them, which, indeed, he has not succeeded in doing with due clearness. Let us now consider his system under less subtle points of view.

      If the made be admitted as the only criterion of the true, the understanding is obviously excluded from communication with all that it has not itself produced. And not having made itself, it cannot know itself. "The soul," says Vico, "knowing itself does not make itself, and therefore knows not in what manner it knows." Thus abstracting the problem of intelligibility proposed in our twelfth chapter, Vico denies to our soul a criterion of itself, for the sole reason that it is not its own cause. Identity, therefore, far from being an origin of representation, as was proved in our eleventh chapter, is incompatible with it; nothing can know itself, because nothing has made itself.

      Hence results a very grave error; for it may be inferred that not even God can know himself, since he is not his own cause. It is not enough to say that he knows himself in the Word, since the Word is impossible if intelligence be not supposed.

      303. The whole world of reality, distinct from that of intellectual being, will forever remain unknown in Vico's system, which, for this reason, leads to the most rigid skepticism. What does he admit? The cognition by the mind of the mind's own work; and in this are comprised the acts of consciousness and all the purely ideal objects which we create in it. This, also, is admitted by the skeptics, no one of whom would deny that we have consciousness, and that there is an ideal world the work of this consciousness, or at least attested by it.

      If, then, we admit no criterion of truth but the made, we open the door to skepticism, and abandon the world of reality to fix ourselves in that of appearance. Nevertheless, so strange are human opinions, Vico thought directly the contrary; he believed that only with his system was it possible to refute skepticism. It is curious to hear him say with perfect seriousness: "The only means of destroying skepticism is to take this for the criterion of truth, that every one is certain of the truth which he makes."

      But what is the foundation of so odd an opinion? Let us listen to the philosopher himself, who says, indeed, many good things, but does not show how they may tend to the overthrow of skepticism: "Skeptics are always repeating that things seem to them, but that they do not know what they really are. They confess effects, and consequently concede causes to them; but they assert that they do not know these causes, because they do not know the genus or form according to which things are made. Admit these propositions, and retort them thus: the comprehension of causes which contains all the genera and all the forms under which effects are produced, and the appearances of which the skeptic confessedly sees, although he denies that he knows their real essence, is found in the first truth which comprises all, and in which