Real Being, Fictitious Being, and Being of Reason

The goal of Part 1 is to show that ordinary Logic and Philosophy only exercise and strengthen the memory.

What is Being?

I define being as ‘Everything which, when it is clearly and distinctly perceived, we find to exist necessarily or at least possibly.’

It follows that a Chimera, a Fictitious Being and a Being of Reason cannot be classed as beings.

This is because a Chimera, of its own nature, cannot exist.

(N.B. ‘Chimera’ is that whose nature involves an open contradiction, explained in Chapter 3.)

A Fictitious Being excludes clear and distinct perception. This is because a man joins together what he wants to join and separates what he wants to separate in his imagination.

Finally, a Being of Reason is nothing but a mode of thinking. It serves more easily to retain, explain, and imagine things that are understood.

Mode of thinking (Schol. Prop. 15 Part 1) refers to all modifications of thought. Examples are intellect, joy, imagination, etc.

There are certain modes of thinking that serve to:

• retain things more firmly and more easily,
• recall them to mind

By this rule, in order to retain something that is quite new and impress it on the memory, we use another thing that is familiar to us that has something in common with it either in name or in actuality.

Similarly, philosophers have arranged all natural things in fixed classes, called genus, species, etc., when they encounter something new.

We have modes of thinking for explaining a thing by comparing it with another thing.

We do this through the modes of thinking called time, number, measure, etc.

• time explains duration
• number explains discrete quantity
• measure explains continuous quantity

We are also accustomed to depict in our imagination images of all the things that we understand.

We also imagine nonbeings as beings.

This is because the [lower] mind has has no greater power to affirm than to deny.

The sensing of objects excite the motion of the spirits in the brain*. Imagination is merely the sensing of those traces found in the brain.

Superphysics Note

This is from Descartes’ animal spirits

Such a sensing is a confused affirmation.

This is why we imagine as beings all the modes that the mind uses to negate. Examples are blindness, extremity or limit, boundary, and darkness.

These modes of thinking are not ideas of things and cannot be classed as ideas.

They also have no object (ideatum) that exists of necessity or that can exist.

These modes of thinking are taken for ideas of things because they arise so immediately from real beings. They are easily confused with them by the unattentive.

They have even given them names as if these beings exist outside our mind.

These beings, or rather nonbeings, they have called beings of reason.

And so, it is absurd to divide being into:

• real being and
• being of reason

This is because they are really dividing being into:

• being and nonbeing, or
• being and a mode of thinking.

Verbal or grammatical philosophers fall into errors like these because they judge things from words, not words from things.

It is also absurd to say that a being of reason is not a mere nothing.

This is because if he seeks outside the intellect what is meant by those words, he will find it is mere nothing, whereas if he understands them as modes of thinking, then they are true real beings.

When I ask what is species, I am only enquiring into the nature of that mode of thinking that is in fact a being and is distinct from another mode of thinking.

However, these modes of thinking cannot be called ideas. Nor can they be said to be true or false, just as love cannot be called true or false, but only good or bad.

So when Plato said that man is a featherless biped creature,2 he erred no more than those who said that man is a rational creature.

This is because Plato knew no less than others that man is a rational creature. But he referred man to a certain class so that, when he wanted to think about man, by having recourse to the class that was easy for him to remember, he could immediately come to think of man.

Aristotle was gravely at fault by thinking that by that definition of his he had adequately explained human essence.

I cannot answer now whether Plato was right.

There is no agreement between real being and the objects (ideata) of a being of reason.

We must beware of confusing real beings with beings of reason.

For it is one thing to enquire into the nature of things, and quite another to enquire into the modes by which we perceive things.

If these are confused, we shall not be able to understand either modes of perceiving or nature itself.

• It will be the cause of our falling into grave errors, as has happened to many before us.

It should also be noted that many people confuse a being of reason with a fictitious being, for they think that a fictitious being is also a being of reason because it has no existence outside the mind.

But if attention is correctly paid to the definitions just given of being of reason and fictitious being, a considerable difference will be found between them both from consideration of their cause and also from their own nature without regard to cause.

I defined fictitious being as the connecting of 2 terms by mere act of will without any guidance of reason.

Therefore, a fictitious being can be true by chance.

But a being of reason neither depends solely on the will nor does it consist of any terms joined together, as is quite obvious from the definition.

So if someone asks whether a fictitious being is a real being or a being of reason, we should reply by repeating what we have just said, namely, that to divide being into real being and being of reason is a mistake.

And so the question as to whether fictitious being is real being or being of reason is based on error. For it presupposes that all being is divided into real being and being of reason.

Being should be divided into:

• being that exists necessarily of its own nature (i.e., whose essence involves existence) and
• being whose essence involves only possible existence.
  • This last is divided into Substance and Mode.

Being is divided into Substance and Mode, not Substance and Accident.

This is because Accident is just a mode of thinking, inasmuch as it denotes only a relation [respectum].

For example, when I say that a triangle moves, motion is not a mode of the triangle, but of the body that moves.

So motion is called accident in relation to the triangle, whereas in relation to body it is a real being or mode. For motion cannot be conceived without body, though it can without a triangle.