RELATIONS OF INTUITION WITH THE RANK OF THE PERCEPTIVE BEING.
106. The perfection of intelligence involves extension and clearness
of its intuitions; the more perfect it is, the more intuitive it will
be. The infinite intelligence does not know by discursion, but by
intuition: it does not need to seek objects: it sees them all before
itself. It sees with intuition of identity what belongs to its own
essence, and with intuition of causality every thing that does or can
exist outside of itself. Other minds have an intuition so much the more
perfect as they are more elevated in the order to which they belong; so
that cognition by conceptions indicates an imperfection of intelligence.
107. The relations of one being with other beings will therefore depend
upon the rank it holds in the scale of the universe. God, infinite
being, and the cause of all that does or can exist, has intimate and
immediate relations with the whole universe, considered not only in its
entireness but even in its smallest particles. There is consequently
in God a most perfect representation of all beings taken not only in
their generality, but also in their minutest differences. The Being,
cause of all, does not know objects by vague conceptions, by means of
representations which only show what all beings have in common, but as
he has made their slightest differences, they must be presented to him
with perfect clearness. His cognition is founded upon a reality which
is himself; his understanding does not fluctuate through an ideal and
hypothetical world; but, fixed with clearest intuition upon infinite
reality, he sees all that the infinite being is, and all that it can
produce with its infinite activity. For God there is no experience
proceeding from without, for nothing can exert any influence upon him;
all his experience consists in the knowledge and love of himself.
108. Created beings, occupying a determinate place in the scale of the
universe, relate to it only under certain aspects. Their relations with
their fellow beings are brought to a point of view, to which their
perceptive faculties are subordinated. The representativeness, which
they contain in themselves, must be proportionate to the cognition
that has to produce it. Hence it follows that every intelligent being
will have its representativeness adapted to the functions it has to
exercise in the universe. If the being do not pertain to the order of
intelligences, its perceptive faculties will be limited to sensible
intuitions, in a measure corresponding to the place it is destined to
occupy.
109. We have seen that general ideas and the intuition of determinate
objects fecundate the intellectual faculties. From this we infer that
every intelligence stands in need of intuitions, if its cognitions are
not to be limited to a purely hypothetical order.
The human mind, destined to a union with the body, and to a continual
communication with the corporeal universe, has received the gift of
sensible intuition as the basis of its relations with bodies. The same
is the case with brutes. Sensible intuition has been given to them
because they must have continual relations with the external world:
but, being confined to the functions of animal life, they have no
intuitions superior to the sphere of sensibility, nor do they possess
the force necessary to convert sensible representations into objects of
intellectual combinations.
110. There is an immense difference between brutes and man, in the
scale of beings. Since every intelligence is conscious of itself, and
can fix its attention upon its acts, the human mind knows its own
intuitively, and therefore discovers in itself an intuition superior to
the sensible. Besides these intuitions, we have the power of discursion
by which we form representations, and by them attain to the cognition
of objects not offered immediately to our perception.
Thus, starting with the data furnished by external and internal
experience, and aided by those general principles which involve the
primary conditions of every intelligence and of every being, we are
enabled to penetrate to the world of reality, and to know, although
imperfectly, the assemblage of beings which constitute the universe,
and the infinite cause which made them all.