The Critical Principles of Orestes a Brownson

for thought to originate. In the first place he thinks it evident that this idea cannot arise from sense-perception. The mind, when it operates upon the senses by the method of abstraction, can never arrive at the knowledge of a real and necessary being, an 'ens necessarium et reale,' for the simple and logical reason that such a conclusion would be greater than the premises warrant (xix 489). The less cannot contain the greater; sound logic forbids that a conclusion contain what is not contained in the premises. Hence those who assert that they obtain the notion of a necessary being from sense-perception, which presents only contingent things, err, not in the fact that they have the notion, but in the method in which they claim to get it. Without knowing it they really obtain the notion of necessary being by intuition, which offers the only logical solution of the problem (xix 489). But another question immediately arises: By the intuition of what is man enabled to arrive at the notions that he possesses? Here opinions differ, though the solution again is only one. The exclusive ontologist says we obtain all knowledge through the intuition of simple being. He is right in saying that we have this intuition, but wrong in inferring that from the intuition of simple being we can deduce the idea of existences or creatures, for from it nothing can be derived but mere being (xix 489). In the same way the intuition of existences, or created beings, cannot lead us to th...