Absolute and Relative

To distinguish the simplest things from the involved ones, we must, in each series of things, in which we have directly deduced several truths from one another, to observe:

• what is most simple, and
• how from this all other things are more or less or equally removed.

This proposition does not teach anything very new.

But it:

• contains the chief secret of the art, and
• is no less useful in this whole Treatise

It advises that all things can be arranged in certain series so that they can be known from one another.

In this way, we can immediately know whether it will be profitable to explore some others first, and which ones, and in what order.

This is different from the system of some philosophers who have divided certain series into their categories. They then arrange the series into some genus of being.

But so that this can be done correctly, it must be noted first that

All relevant things should be compared among themselves so that they may be known from one another and can be known to be either absolute or relative.

“Absolute” is whatever contains within itself a pure and simple nature that the question revolves around.

Examples are everything that is independent, cause, simple, universal, one, equal, similar, straight, or other such things.

The first of these are the simplest and easiest, so that we use it in resolving questions.

“Relative”, however, is what either has the same nature, or at least something of it, insofar as it can be referred to the absolute and deduced by a certain series from it.

It involves certain other things in its concept, which I call relations: such is whatever is called dependent, effect, composite, particular, many, unequal, dissimilar, oblique, etc.

Which relations are removed from the absolute, the more subordinated relations they contain among themselves; which all should be distinguished in this rule, and their mutual natural connection and order must be observed so that we can proceed from the last to that which is most absolute by passing through all others.

And in this consists the whole secret of the art, that we carefully observe the most absolute in all things. For some things under one consideration are more absolute than others, but seen differently are more relative: as the universal is more absolute than the particular, because it has a simpler nature, but it can also be called more relative, because it depends on individuals to exist, etc.

Also sometimes things are truly more absolute than others, but not yet the most of all: as if we look at individuals, the species is something absolute; if the genus, it is something relative; among measurable things, extension is something absolute, but among extensions, length, etc. Also finally, to understand better here the series of things to be known, we do not ignore the nature of each, as the purpose of retaining them, but rather distinguishing them from the nature of each.