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Updated: May 4, 2025
The Platonists solve this difficulty by boldly declaring that the universal ideas or forms are the real existents and the models of the things of sense. This is absurd. Aristotle's solution in the Metaphysics is likewise unsatisfactory. Our conception, however, of the Active Intellect enables us to solve this problem satisfactorily.
That is why Aristotle says that the material intellect is not anything before it intellects; that it is in its essence potential with reference to the intelligibilia, and becomes actual when it understands them actually. Themistius says it is not any of the existents actually, but a potential essence receiving material forms.
I was only gettin orf a goak, but you roter hev seen the Old Kurnal jump up & howl. He actooally fomed at the mowth. "This can't be real," he showtid. "No, no. It's a horrid dream. Sir, you air not a human bein you hav no existents yure a Myth!" "Wall," sez I, "old hoss, yule find me a ruther onkomfortable Myth ef you punch my inards in that way agin."
It may exist or not, depending upon its cause; hence the name possible existent. A necessary existent is one whose existence is in itself and not derived from elsewhere. It is a necessary existent because its own essence cannot be thought without involving existence. Now the question is, Is there such a thing as a necessary existent, or are all existents merely possible?
If we want to speak of such existents which hardly happens except in philosophy we have to do it by means of some elaborate phrase, such as "the visual sensation which occupied the centre of my field of vision at noon on January 1, 1919." Such ultimate simples I call "particulars."
Whatever is necessary per se can have no cause for its existence and can have no multiplicity in itself ; hence it is neither a body nor a corporeal power . We can also prove easily that there cannot be two necessary existents per se.
Neither the word nor what it names is one of the ultimate indivisible constituents of the world. In language there is no direct way of designating one of the ultimate brief existents that go to make up the collections we call things or persons.
Nor is it possible there should be two necessary existents; for the necessary existent, we have just shown, must be of the utmost simplicity, and hence cannot have any attribute added to its essence. Now if there is a second, there must be something by which the first differs from the second, or they are identical.
This question, however, is not important for our present purposes, and I shall therefore not discuss it further. The awarenesses we have considered so far have all been awarenesses of particular existents, and might all in a large sense be called sense-data.
There is nothing practical in this contemplation, it is just the knowledge of existents and their causes. This is called the science of truth, and is the most important part of philosophy. The practical intellect is again divided into the cogitative and the technological.
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