Superphysics
Perception
4 minutes • 814 words
Table of contents
- 45. What constitutes clear and distinct perception?
- 46. A perception may be clear without being distinct, but that it cannot be distinct unless it is clear.
- 47. To correct the prejudices of our early years, we must consider what is clear in each of our first or simple notions.
- 48. Things or the affections of things
- 49. The eternal truths cannot be enumerated. But it is not necessary to enumerate them.
- 50. These truths are clearly perceived, but not equally by all men, on account of prejudices.
45. What constitutes clear and distinct perception?
There are many persons who, through their whole lifetime, never perceive anything in a way necessary for judging of it properly. The knowledge upon which we can establish a certain and indubitable judgment must be both clear and distinct.
“Clear” is present and manifest to the mind giving attention to it.
This is the same we clearly see objects when they stimulate the eye with sufficient force which then makes the eye regard them.
“Distinct” is that which is so precise and different from all other objects as to comprehend in itself only what is clear.
[Footnote: “what appears manifestly to him who considers it as he ought."— FRENCH.]
46. A perception may be clear without being distinct, but that it cannot be distinct unless it is clear.
For example, when any one feels intense pain, the knowledge of this pain is very clear. But it is not always distinct.
Men usually confound it with the obscure judgment they form regarding its nature, and think that there is in the suffering part something similar to the sensation of pain of which they are alone conscious.
Thus, perception may be clear without being distinct. But it can never be distinct without being clear.
47. To correct the prejudices of our early years, we must consider what is clear in each of our first or simple notions.
In our early years, the mind was so immersed in the body. It perceived many things clearly. Yet it yet knew nothing distinctly.
Numerous prejudices were thus contracted in our judgment, most of which are never laid aside afterwards.
But we are now in a position to get rid of these.
I will:
- list below all the simple notions that make up our thoughts and
- distinguish in each what is clear from what is obscure, or fitted to lead into error.
48. Things or the affections of things
The objects that we know are either:
- Things or the affections of things
The most general of this kind are substance, duration, order, number, and others which have notions that apply to all the kinds of things.
I do not recognise more than 2 highest kinds (SUMMA GENERA) of things:
- intellectual things, or such as have the power of thinking, including mind or thinking substance and its properties
- material things, embracing extended substance, or body and its properties.
- Eternal truths possessing no existence beyond our thought*
Things and the affections of things are (in the French) equivalent to ‘what has some (i.e., a REAL) existence’ as opposed to the class of ’eternal truths’ which have merely an IDEAL existence.
Perception, volition, and all modes as well of knowing as of willing, are related to thinking substance.
On the other hand, to extended substance we refer magnitude, or extension in length, breadth, and depth, figure, motion, situation, divisibility of parts themselves, and the like.
There are, however, besides these, certain things of which we have an internal experience that ought not to be referred either to the mind of itself, or to the body alone, but to the close and intimate union between them, as will hereafter be shown in its place.
Of this class are the appetites of hunger and thirst, etc., and also the emotions or passions of the mind which are not exclusively mental affections, as the emotions of anger, joy, sadness, love, etc.; and, finally, all the sensations, as of pain, titillation, light and colours, sounds, smells, tastes, heat, hardness, and the other tactile qualities.
49. The eternal truths cannot be enumerated. But it is not necessary to enumerate them.
It is impossible a thing can arise from nothing: EX NIHILO NIHIL FIT.
This is an eternal truth.
It is the same as:
- “It is impossible the same thing can at once be and not be”
- “what is done cannot be undone”
- “He who thinks must exist while he thinks”
- etc.
The rest are difficult to enumerate.
But we do not need to enumerate them all because if have no prejudices to blind us, we can know them when we think about them.*
Superphysics Note
50. These truths are clearly perceived, but not equally by all men, on account of prejudices.
These common notions can be clearly and distinctly known.
Yet some of them are not known by all men because they are not equally admitted by all.
This is because some have prejudices* which make men not ready to embrace them, even if others, who are free from those prejudices, can clearly apprehend them.
