Just as every other thing is said to be good because of its perfection, so the intellect is good because of its truth.

If to know is to super-exist reality inwardly by virtue of reality’s fecundating action, and if, on the other hand, apprehension consists in this super-existence of each aspect of the real either by itself or unified by the act of existing, it would seem that a treatise on epistemology should normally end with a study of our possession of things by the whole ensemble of the acts of apprehension since they actualize the definition of knowledge. These acts remedy the limitations of our nature by making us share in the nature of others and make each of us imitators of the fullness and limitlessness of Uncreated Being. Such an ending would be suitable were it not for the extreme weakness of our intellect and its powers of assimilation, which, instead of letting reality surge into us with the entirety of its being, sift it by means of the external senses, each one grasping but a single aspect of sensible things, and by means of the agent intellect, which, being dependent upon phantasms, can only give the intelligible to us successively, bit by bit, in a multitude of intelligible species differing in number and content. Thus, the outward real, whose unity is absolute, exists in our intellect dispersed into a multitude of concepts, each of which is the likeness of one or another facet of being; it exists whole and entire within us but with a mode of existing unlike the mode it possesses outside us. If we may borrow a comparison from the world of mass production, we can say that in order to facilitate its entrance into the soul, the thing is dismantled, disassembled; each part of the whole is there, the essentials as well as the accessories, but it needs to be put back together; we need an assembly line.

God... knows each thing by simple intelligence, by understanding the essence of each thing; as if we, by the very fact that we understand what man is, were to understand all that can be predicated of man. This however does not happen in the case of our intellect, which proceeds from one thing to another, since the intelligible species represents one thing in such a way as not to represent another. Hence, when we understand what man is, we do not forthwith understand other things which belong to him, but we understand them one by one, according to a certain succession. On this account, the things we understand as separated we must reduce to one by way of composition and division, by forming an enunciation. [S.Th., I, 14, 14]

And the reason for the imperfection of apprehension—an imperfection without which human knowledge would terminate in this operation—is the poverty of our agent intellect:

If the intellect in apprehending the quiddity of the subject were at once to have the knowledge of all that can be attributed to or removed from the subject, it would never understand by composing and dividing, but only by understanding the essence... And this comes from the weakness of the intellectual light within us. [S.Th., I, 58, 4]

In these two passages St. Thomas is explaining that the weakness of our intellectual equipment obliges us to disassemble or dismantle the thing in the act of apprehending it, but that we have a capacity for reassembling it in the act called judgment. In judgment we reconstruct the original unity of the thing by regrouping its different aspects according to its mode of existing outside the soul: divorce is just as unnatural in being as it is in marriage, and knowledge must not put asunder what God has created as one. However, in order not to misunderstand the true nature of the mind’s second operation, we must note one thing, which is that judgment completes apprehension, not by taking its place, by grasping), an aspect of the thing that escaped apprehension, but by bringing unity into discontinuous knowledge. In other words, judgment works with concepts, with the already known, and not with exterior reality. The latter comes in only when the work of reassembling concepts is finished, for it is the criterion determining the value of the regrouping; it is the model by which judgment’s unification is measured and seen to be conforming or not, i.e., true or false.

In judgment’s perfective character with relation to apprehension, we see the metaphysical law governing all creatures applied to human knowledge. Wherever the act of existing and quiddity are not identical, being and perfection do not coincide, for things are what they are by substantial being, whereas they are perfect by their accidental being. Such, proportionately speaking, is the case with human knowledge, all of whose essential elements are present in apprehension, but whose perfection is the result of the increase in knowledge adduced by judgment. In the same way that accidents perfect substance by putting at its disposal various means of attaining its end, judgment brings to apprehension the intellect’s sole means of perfecting its knowledge, that is, of possessing the truth of its knowledge, just as by apprehension it possesses the truth of things. And since the truth of knowledge can only be in the mind, judgment deals first and foremost with mental activity:

Just as every other thing is said to be good because of its perfection, so the intellect is said to be good because of its truth. Which shows that the true and the false, being objects of knowledge, are found in the mind. [In VI Metaph., lect. 4, nn. 1239-1240]

Thus, to know truth is first and foremost simultaneously to know distinct concepts, previously possessed; it is not to apprehend an aspect of the real that has escaped apprehension. In the judgment there is no super-existence of a new thing in us, as there is in apprehension, but the unified super-existence of that which previously was multiple: No more things are known, but the same thing is better known.

There is a certain composition in things but it constitutes a single reality which the intellect grasps as one in a simple concept; as for the composition and division by which the intellect combines or divides its concepts, it exists in the intellect and not in things. And so, the fact that a being is true by virtue of such a composition is different from items which properly are beings really existing outside the soul, such as quiddity, substance, quality, or quantity... [In VI Metph., lect. 4, n. 1243]

Thus, we must insist that judgment consists not in knowing what things are, neither in their quiddity nor in their existence, for apprehension does that, but rather in regrouping the concepts by which we apprehend the quiddity and existere of things, in order to perfect our initial knowledge of them. To bring out more vividly the difference between apprehension and judgment (i.e., between our knowledge of things and the truth of our knowledge), St. Thomas draws a rather surprising comparison between the true and accidental being, so as to exclude them both from metaphysics. Both of them, he tells us, contain nothing more than exists in being by itself, for accidental being results from the unforseen meeting of two ontological aspects of an external thing, whereas the true consists in the meeting, in and by the mind, of the pre-existing concepts that are themselves the likeness of an outward being. That is why neither accidental being nor the true “reveals a new ontological aspect of the real, foreign to what subsisting beings are.”

Such is the Thomistic context for the knowledge of truth. There is the same distinction between analysis of the knowledge of truth and analysis of the nature of knowledge that exists between the apprehension of being as quiddity and that of being as perfect. Consequently we can set up the following proportion:

Knowledge of truth	as accidents
——————————— :	—————
is to the nature of knowledge	are to substance
as being secundum quid	as the perfect
—————————— :	———————
is to being simpliciter	is to the imperfect

The object of this third part of our treatise is therefore the perfection of human knowledge. To ask, “What is true knowledge?” is the same as asking what factors cause our knowledge to pass from its inevitably imperfect state at the level of apprehension to the state of perfection that is knowledge of truth. Our plan in answering this question is given us by the materials with which we are working. It is a matter of examining the immanent activity by which we reassemble the different concepts of the real produced by apprehension, in order to restore to known beings a unity more consistent with that outside the soul. This conceptual regrouping can no more be effected without reference to the real, the unit of measure, than a complicated machine can be reassembled without reference to a plan showing the exact interconnections of its various parts. Therefore, in Chapter VIII we shall analyze the nature and functions of this operation that perfects knowledge by substituting unity for multiplicity of concepts; then, in Chapter IX, we shall examine the consequences of this unification upon human knowledge—truth, the effect of unity. This will be the division of the Part Three.

CHAPTER 8
WHAT OPERATION PERFECTS HUMAN KNOWLEDGE?

Since the reality we are going to study belongs to the realm of the living and of the life of knowledge, we shall proceed to seek its nature by the method that we must inevitably adopt in order to perceive its essential aspects. Therefore, we shall follow the same plan that we used in analyzing apprehension; first we shall consider the exercise of the act, and then its specification. Hence, there will be two sections in this chapter.

Section I: Exercise of the Operation Perfecting Human Knowledge

A. Origins and subjective causes of this new act

The human intellect knows through the fecundating action of the intelligible species communicating the light of the agent intellect and of the nature of things; under what pressure does it know perfectly? Under the pressure of a natural desire making our intellect a natural appetite for all being and, therefore, for the truth which is the perfect possession of being, but especially under the action of the agent intellect, our natural light, which everywhere accompanies the operation of the possible intellect in its exercise:

The intellectual light, which exists in a subject as a permanent and perfect form, especially perfects the intellect’s apprehension of the principles of the things which this light reveals. So, by the agent intellect’s light, the intellect knows, above all, the first principles of everything it naturally understands.

The action of the agent intellect, as it is described in the preceding pages, must not be imagined as something transitory which, having prepared the intelligible species and given it to the possible intellect, takes no further part in intellection. That would be a purely spatial conception of a spiritual activity and would in no way correspond to the respective immanence of the different powers and their operations. When St. Thomas uses the expression intellectual light to mean the agent intellect, this term must be given its full analogical value. In illuminating color, physical light does not give it permanent visibility in such a way that the light may stop its action without the color’s ceasing to be actually visible. Proportionately speaking, the same is true of the agent intellect’s action with respect to the object and operation of our intellect. The illumination of the agent intellect must be permanent; every intellectual activity begins and proceeds through its action, which is so well put by the following text:

Because intellectual light is that which makes things intelligible purely and simply (simpliciter), every intellect must produce its act by this light it possesses.

If the agent intellect functions at the beginning of knowledge because it produces the intelligible in act, it is also at the heart of knowledge in the act of apprehension itself, for it is to the act of intellection as the sun is to the act of seeing; it actualizes the object and strengthens the power:

We can speak of the intellectual light only by referring to what we know of physical light. Physical light... does two things for vision. First, it makes actually visible that which was only potentially visible; secondly, by its very nature, it enables our visual power to see better. So we can attribute to intellectual light the same power, namely of being the intellect’s vigor in its act of intellecting, as well as being the source of the knowability of its object. [De veritate, 9, 1]

This vigor brought by the agent intellect to the intelligence enables it to grow to its ultimate perfection-possession of total truth. But this growth has successive stages of which the act that we are now studying is only the first. Even though St. Thomas rarely mentions it, we must never forget this necessitating role of the intellectual light in studying the mental operation by which it attains a state of perfection not possessed in apprehension, for St. Thomas’ metaphysical theory of the inter-causality of the two intellects is always presupposed in his explanation of human knowledge, because, as we have seen above, it is its center.

However, the completion of our knowledge by a perfective act cannot be explained merely in terms of the intellect’s natural appetite for being and the agent intellect’s illuminative role. There is also a sort of psychological need, that causes us deep intellectual dissatisfaction and insatiable curiosity as long as we have not reduced to unity that which is presented as multiple, for the inuitiple as such is unintelligible to us.9 As we have observed, human knowledge results from a multiplication of concepts that present themselves as so many different aspects of reality. The intellect’s irrepressible tendency is to unify its concepts according to an order it constructs itself, an order that, without destroying each concept’s identity, situates it within a whole of which it is an integrating part. Thus, it is as parts of a whole10 that apprehended concepts are known by this new intellectual operation, whose essential function is to perfect knowledge, because it substitutes, for the primitive multiplicity. an intelligible arrangement answering the deepest needs of our intellect’s nature. Such are the subjective origins of this second mental act whose nature we must now study.

B. Analysis of the operation perfecting our knowledge

Impelled by the forces just mentioned, the human intellect sets out to perfect its knowledge. Unlike apprehension, which is at the mercy of things and wholly dependent upon them, the soul shows a hitherto unknown initiative in this perfective activity:

In its judicative activity the soul is not at the mercy of things but, in a way, takes the initiative in its act... [De veritate, I, 10]

The composition of a proposition is not a work of nature but of reason and intellect. [In III De anima, lect. 11, n. 751]

This difference of noetic attitude between apprehension and the operation perfecting it affects the latter’s structure throughout. Apprehension has an abstract mode, imposed by the agent intellect, and its act is assimilation and its term a simple likeness of the substantial or accidental quiddity of things; but the mode of the second operation is concrete, its act is judgment, and its term an enunciation, or complex concept. An explanatory word about each of these aspects will suffice to indicate the nature of this second operation of the mind.

1. Concretion or Composition as a “Mode” of Knowledge. Whenever St. Thomas wants to describe the intellectual operation we are analyzing here, he uses the terms componere, compositio, concretio, unitio, to show that this act must be understood with reference to the intelligible whole resulting from its effort:

Since mental concepts are likenesses of things, we can always consider and name them from two different angles. First, in themselves; secondly in relation to the things of which they are the likenesses. Thus a statue of Hercules, considered in itself, is and is said to be copper; but as a likeness of Hercules it is said to be a man. Likewise, considering mental concepts in themselves, there is always composition wherever there is truth and falsity, because the latter can exist in the mind only insofar as the intellect compares a simple concept with another. [In I Perih., lect. 3, n. 4]

Ex multis unum, this is the motto for this act of the intellect, because it is the sole means of extending the radius of human knowledge, which is allergic to multiplicity as such and, therefore, to the very situation in which it is placed by the nature of simple apprehension, a situation from which it can emerge only by substituting unity for multiplicity. This substitution is performed by the intellect upon the concepts of simple apprehension, not by transforming them, which would destroy them as likenesses of things, but by integrating them within the whole. This gives these concepts a functional value and meaning that entitles them to a new name, a sort of surname indicating their particular vocation in this new context of intelligibility. The surnames given to simple concepts in their quest for unity are noun and verb:

Simple words may be considered in three ways, the first... considers them as the absolute signs of simple concepts, the second sees them as parts of the enunciation... inasmuch as they are nouns and verbs... and the third studies their constitutive role in the syllogistic order as terms. [In I Perih., lect. 1, n. 5]

When, therefore, the soul takes the initiative to perfect knowledge by reducing its multitudinous concepts to unity, through composition, it gives simple concepts a function foreign to them as absolute likenesses of things: it makes them correlatives. This means that the two simple concepts which were the material for the composition constructed by the intellect now take on a new meaning, essentially relative to their role in this whole constructed by the intellect; they become subject and predicate, the function of subject being taken over by concept nouns and that of predicate by concept verbs. We must not forget that the second operation of the mind consists in the composition of two simple concepts, and that consequently all the material used as integral parts in this composition pre-exists in apprehension. Thus, apprehension must contain some concepts capable of playing the role of subject and others capable of taking over the role of predicate. What concepts are these, which can respectively fulfill such different functions?

Concept nouns are those which are likenesses of the quiddity of things, while concept verbs are likenesses of particular accidents springing from substance, such as action, passion, and, in a way, as “is,” or est; they express the dynamism emanating from substance or that which it receives. It is interesting to note that with the notion of noun and verb, whose essential function is to work for the perfection of human knowledge, we again encounter the aspect of simple apprehension wherein the thing is apprehended as perfect, i.e., as substance and accidents. The same laws apply because knowledge is of being and obeys the laws of being. In this original composition that the mind constructs from its concepts, in order to have unified knowledge of them, it imitates the behavior of things as it grasped this behavior in the act of apprehension. Within this intelligible whole constructed by the intellect, concept nouns are what substance is in the extra-mental thing; they are the stable, permanent element remaining identical despite the attribution of a multitude of predicates. This is why they are subjects, for what characterizes substance is precisely, as its name indicates, its support of accidents, its giving them existence. Concept verbs, on the contrary, have an entirely different role to play in the intellect’s synthesis of the concepts of apprehension. Their function relative to the subject is informative, actualizing; they are its form, its acts’ just as accidents are the perfective form of substance; they express action, passion, existere, insofar as they inhere in the subject, insofar as the subject is their source and term. Since action, passion, and existere are always acts whose perfective elements, concept verbs, are always predicates par excellence, and no other concept can play the role of predicate unless the verb be present to help it perform this function, “the verb always signifies what is predicated.

Verbs themselves are what is predicated before being the signs of predicates. It must be understood that the verb is the sign of the predicate because every predication, by reason of the composition it implies, is accomplished by the verb, be it essential or accidental...

But since the actuality which is the principal meaning of the verb is, is indifferently the actuality of every form, either the substantial or the accidental act, hence it is that when we wish to signify that any form or act actually inheres in any subject, we signify it by this verb is. [In Perih., n. 9, 22]

An example will bring out the change in perspective undergone by simple concepts when they become part of the synthesis set up by the mind. Take the concepts man and running; in apprehension they express two concepts, one corresponding to human nature and the other to local motion. But these two concepts cannot be thought of simultaneously as long as they are considered as two absolutes, for their respective intelligibility is mutually independent. To think these concepts simultaneously we must establish a bond between them in such a way that they constitute only one intelligibility. This bond is the composition of two concepts, one of which becomes the subject or matter of the other, which is its act; thus, we have, the man runs, i.e., a certain subject actually performs a certain activity. The man and his activity are known as one thing:

It is manifest that man and white are the same in subject and diverse in idea; for the idea of man is one thing and that of whiteness is another... To this diversity in idea corresponds the plurality of predicate and subject, while the intellect signifies the identity of the thing by the composition itself. [S.Th., I, 13, 12]

The mode of composition, or concretio, characterizing the act that perfects our knowledge is, therefore, essentially unifying, for it unites the different concepts dealing with being as such, with the essential principles of substances, and with the different accidents of these same substances by means of the functional significance assumed by absolute concepts within the framework of the composition constructed by the mind. We must now examine the act of knowledge characterized by this mode of composition and the term emanating from this act.

2. Judgment and Its Term, Enunciation. We have just seen that the mode of this intellectual act is completely different from that of apprehension, whose abstractive mode isolates concepts and multiplies them in order to model itself after the different intelligible aspects of the thing. Composition, on the contrary, unifies, sets up the subject-predicate relationship that enables it to include in one single grasp the multiple aspects of its knowledge of things. To this difference in the mode of knowledge corresponds an act in no way resembling apprehension, for whereas the latter is assimilation, the act of the second mental operation is judgment.

Borrowed from law, this term still keeps something of its origin despite the transposition it necessarily undergoes in being taken into an order so completely different from that concerned with the administration of laws governing a society. All the words used by grammarians and logicians to designate the intellectual act that predicates something of a subject, or attributes an action or form to it, have a judiciary origin. Etymologically, the word attribute means ad tribunum, i.e., before the tribune, the Roman magistrate who dispensed justice, hence our word tribunal. Similarly, the words predicare, praedicatum, and judicium come from the root deik, which means to show or indicate, and all belong to legal terminology.

When the intellect brings before the tribunal of its reflection two or more concepts, one of which, the subject, plays the accused and the others, the predicates or attributes, play the alleged crimes of the accused, the intellect hands down the verdict of guilty or not guilty. What does it judge? Does it judge the extra-mental real or the unification of concepts that it has just made? This is the delicate problem we must solve in order to understand the true nature of this intellectual act; for if we say that the direct object of the act of judgment is the extra-mental real, we assimilate judgment into apprehension, but if its direct object is our unified concepts, then judgment is a distinct act added to apprehension and perfecting it. If apprehension knows the quiddity of things, while judgment knows their act of existing, then both have the exterior thing as their direct object, both apprehend different aspects of the thing, and they are only numerically and chronologically distinct, one coming after the other. However, if the act of existing is the direct object of judgment, since judgment is the act of the passive power that is the intellect, and a passive power must receive its object before knowing it—then the intellect would have to be fecundated by an intelligible species of existere, just as it had to be fecundated by the quiddity’s intelligible species before apprehending it. All the objections that can be brought against the abstraction of existere remain in its apprehension by the judgment, for we know only what we are. To know is intentionally to super-exist the extra-mental thing, and unless the thing’s act of existing (existere) super-exists intentionally in us, we will never know it! To say that the thing’s existere is the direct object of judgment is to say that judgment is the act of apprehending this existence. It perfects knowledge just as every apprehension of a new aspect of the real perfects it, but it is not that perfection of knowledge which corrects the analytic character of apprehension (which has only fragmentary knowledge of the real) by regrouping concepts so that man may, in his poor fashion, imitate the comprehensive intuition that God and angels have of the real. In this interpretation, judgment is still apprehension of the most perfect aspect of the real, since it apprehends the act of acts, but it is not a more perfect state of our knowledge of the real, the state to which knowledge is essentially destined, since the reason for the judgment’s existence is precisely the naturally imperfect state of human knowledge, whose necessary mode is abstraction.

If, on the contrary, the direct object of judgment is the composition or synthesis of concepts with which simple apprehension has already enriched the intellect, then judgment’s role is to perfect knowledge, to increase its wisdom and order, to make it imitate the concrete and synthesized way in which things exist by correcting the fragmentation introduced by the intellect into our knowledge of the real. Judgment perfects our knowledge, not by nourishing it with more of the real, but by making more realistic its way of super-existing the real. Thus, its activity is directly concerned with our knowledge of the real, with our concepts as psychological realities. To use one of St. Thomas’ comparisons, the statue of Hercules considered as having certain properties is copper, and considered as a likeness, it is a man; the same is true of concepts. They can be grouped or unified insofar as they have characteristics caused by their state of abstraction, in which case they are subjects or predicates; and they can be grouped insofar as the composition in which they are united by the intellect is, or is not, a likeness of the extra-mental real, and in this case they are true or false. This second consideration, however, is consequent upon the first and presupposes it. In the order of exercise, which is the aspect we are examining now, judicative activity bears directly upon the composition of concepts and not upon the thing with which this synthesis is or is not equated.

It is relatively easy to prove this view by means of an example frequently used by St. Thomas. This example makes it clear that a judgment can be perfect without in any way referring to extra-mental existence, because it is the fruit of a perfect composition constructed by the intellect from a concept that it duplicates, not as a likeness of the real, but as an element in a synthesis made by the intellect itself. To affirm that the man is a man, is to judge. Is this judgment concerned with the real existence of the man or with the identity of the two terms in the synthesis constructed by the intellect? Obviously the judgment is concerned with the composition of concepts and not with human existere in its outward reality.

In propositions where the same thing is predicated of itself, the same rule in some way applies, inasmuch as the intellect considers as the suppositum what takes the place of the subject; and what takes the place of the predicate it considers as the nature of the form existing in the suppositum, according to the saying that predicates are taken formally, and subjects materially. To this diversity in idea corresponds the plurality of predicate and subject, while the intellect signifies the identity by the composition itself. [In V Metaph., lect. 9, nn. 889, 895]

Another proof, even more radical than the judgment of identity, destroys the illusion that judgment has to do directly with the existence of things and not with the composition of concepts. This proof is to be found in a text wherein St. Thomas explains the opposition between “is” considered as a likeness of existere, or the act of existing and “is” meaning the composition constructed by the intellect in a judgment of existence. Having commented upon the Aristotelian text dividing being into two modes, the first extra-mental, the second in the mind, St. Thomas defines the second mode as, “the esse and the est which signify the composition the mind constructs with its concepts, and then he makes a comparison that is at first rather surprising:

The act of existing of every being in nature is substantial. When we say that Socrates is and that this est is used in the primary sense of the word, it is a substantial predicate, for being is superior to each being as animal is superior to man. But taking is in the second meaning of the word to be, it is an accidental predicate. [In V Metaph., lect. 9, n. 896]

This passage brings out the essential difference between the est which is a likeness of the existere of things, and the est which signifies the composition made by the mind. In the first case, est expresses the act of the substance it perfects and from which it is distinguished. In the second, the est expressing composition is a predicate inhering in a subject as a form or accident; it has a functional meaning; it is a concept verb, or the part of a whole.

A third and final proof that the act of judgment bears directly upon the conceptual composition and not upon the existence of things is given us by every affirmation that has God as its object. When we say, “God exists,” “God is good,” etc., it is impossible that the object of these judgments be the existence of God, since to apprehend His existence is no more within our intellect’s grasp than is the apprehension of His essence! Consequently, all these judgments concern the composition of our concepts about God and not His existence:

To be can mean either of two things: it may mean the act of being or it may mean the composition of a proposition effected by the mind in joining the predicate to a subject. Taking to be in the first sense we cannot understand the to be of God, no more than his essence; but we can in the second sense. We know that the proposition which we form about God when we say God is, is true. [S.Th., I, 3, 4, ad 2]

We can thus conclude that the first object of judgment is the unification which it has itself constructed from apprehended concepts and that the est characterizing this act primarily signifies the identity of the components it unites in a relation of attribution enabling it to side with unity against multiplicity:

Nevertheless the composition of the intellect differs from the composition of things, for the components in the thing are diverse, whereas the composition of the intellect is a sign of the identity of the components. [S.Th., I, 85, 5, ad 3]

The immanent term of judgment, the fruit of its fertility, bears all the hereditary marks of its origin. Offspring of the intellect, it has the same spirituality and simplicity as its principle; being the result of a composition, it has the complexity of the elements that contributed to its formation, but a complexity in no way detrimental to its unity. The proper name of the intellect’s new child is enunciation. This term, too, is borrowed from legal terminology and means the official proclamation of a public decision; thus, it is wholly in character with the act it terminates and whose fruit it is:

Just as in external acts we may consider the work and the work done, for instance, the work of building and the house built, so in the act of reason, we may consider the act itself of reason... and something produced by this act. With regard to the speculative reason, this is first of all the definition; secondly the enunciation. [S.Th.. I-II, 90, 1, ad 2]

Just as the concepts of apprehension can be considered successively in themselves and as likenesses of the real and, in accordance with this twofold consideration, can possess different characteristics, so enunciation as concept of the second mental operation has different characteristics when considered in its intentional existence and when considered as a likeness of the mode by which things exist. We shall look briefly at the outstanding characteristics of enunciation considered as a mental reality, while leaving our examination of its characteristics as likeness of the mode of existere of things for the next section.

As we have seen, ex multis unum is the mode proper to judgment; this too is the nature of its immanent term or end, enunciation. Enunciation is not a term or end in the same sense that we intend when speaking of the end of a trip or the end of a nice day, but in the sense that fruit is the end or term of a whole group of biological processes from which it springs and which it crowns. Enunciation crowns the intellect’s work by stabilizing its discoveries, by unifying a group of concepts that apprehension can conceive only successively. Unity of meaning despite complexity of its elements, this is the first property of enunciation, a property that diametrically opposes it to the primary characteristics of the concepts of apprehension, namely, unity of abstraction. For the latter unity is gained at the expense of multiplicity, by not considering it, whereas enunciation’s unity of meaning is achieved by concretio, i.e., by awareness of the multiplicity of concepts and their integration in an order reconstructed by reason.

Upon enunciation’s unity of concretion are grafted two distinct properties modifying its meaning without destroying its unity. The first relates to the subject and begets the universal, particular, or singular character of the enunciation. The second depends upon the verb or predicate, and therefore upon the formal element of enunciation, which makes the latter an affirmation or a negation. The enunciation’s affirmative or negative character is very important for judgment’s need to be either an affirmation or a negation is fundamental to all the propositions governing the intellect’s functioning. Add the fact that affirmation and negation necessarily include time—past, present, and future—and it becomes immediately evident how important this property of enunciation is in the field of singular judgments.

Considered strictly from the point of view of the exercise of intellectual activity, without immediate reference to the things known through their acts, both judgment and its immanent term have as their final end the perfection of knowledge, since their sole function is to substitute, for the inevitable scattering caused among concepts by apprehension’s abstractive mode, a synthesizing view and concept of which the act of apprehension is utterly incapable. Besides this synthesis of simple concepts, judgment uses the treasures of intelligibility already existing in the conceptual hierarchy of predicables and predicaments. Therefore, even from this still limited angle of the immanence of the life of knowledge, it can rightfully be said that judgment is intended to be completivum cognitionis. Now let us examine the perfection it gives to knowledge by relating it to exterior things in the order of specification.

Section II: Exterior Reality as Term of the Knowledge of Judgment

In treating judgment as an act of knowledge in the preceding section, we denied that its direct object is existere, which would play for judgment the role quiddity plays for apprehension, and we did this despite the popularity of this position and the textual evidence that seems to support it. However, we did not intend to deny judgment all contact with extra-mental reality. On the contrary, we refused it this specialization with respect to existere in order to increase the realism of judicative activity, for judgment is made for the whole of being, essence and existence, substance and accidents. As context for studying the second mental operation of the mind, we took the distinction existing in every created thing between being and perfection and applied it to human knowledge, in which the act of simple apprehension in some way plays the role of substance, while judgment has the perfective function of accidents. To illustrate this abstract situation of judgment in relation to apprehension, we compared the act of apprehending with disassembling, dismantling a thing, whereas judgment’s first function is to reassemble concepts so that they may more faithfully reproduce the thing’s extra-mental mode of existing. In the preceding section we analyzed this operation of reassembling concepts as performed by the intellect, and the fruit of this work, enunciation. Now it remains for us to consider the model by which the intellect guides itself in unifying a plurality of apprehended concepts, and the characteristics the verb of the second operation acquires from the fact that it is measured by being. This section is divided according to these two aspects.

A. The exterior term that specifies judgment

just as the concepts of simple apprehension are likenesses of things because they are their effect and have no other purpose than to make them super-exist in the soul, so enunciation is a likeness of the thing because it results from the judgment’s unification of apprehended concepts. But enunciation is the likeness of what? Of the ipsum esse rei, says St. Thomas.

The intellect has two operations. One, called the apprehension of indivisibles, by which we know the quiddity of every thing; the other which composes and divides by forming an affirmative or negative enunciation. To these two operations correspond the two real aspects of things. The first operation has to do with the nature of the thing itself; by means of it the known is situated at a certain degree of being, whether it be a complete or whole thing, or an incomplete thing like a part or accident. The second operation deals with the very being of the thing, which results from the composition of principles in composite things or coincides with the simplicity of nature in spiritual substances. [In lib. De Trinitate, V, 3]

What does St. Thomas mean by the expression ipsum esse rei, which he uses to distinguish simple apprehension from judgment? Should esse be translated by act of existing, or by mode of existing? Is this esse the object of judgment, as quiddity is the object of apprehension? We must answer these two questions in order to grasp the nature of the exterior term specifying judgment, as well as the relations between this exterior term and enunciation, its immanent term.

1. Should ipsum esse rei Be Translated as Act or as Mode of Existing? According to our analysis, the progressive apprehension of being proceeds from the confused to the distinct in two ways, the first of which is directed toward the res or quiddity, whereas the second is oriented toward the act of existing itself, as being what is most perfect in the_real. If this analysis is correct, it is highly improbable that this act of existing could be the term of judgment, for we make innumerable judgments before knowing that the existere of things is their highest perfection. In fact, the apprehension of this fact is the prerogative of the wise man, since by it all metaphysical knowledge is defined. If, on the other hand, the word esse is given the meaning of act as known in the first apprehension of being, then it is no longer the act of existing as such that is the object of judgment but rather a mode of existing, the mode that is characteristic of being immersed in movement, the existere of mobile being as such. Our first enunciation could thus be conceived in such terms as, “Something is running, going up, coming down,” etc., and if this first enunciation is followed by another affirming that, “Something exists,” it would mean, “A thing having a body exists,” which amounts again to knowing a mode of existing and not the act of existing, which, by definition, is separate from all its modes and, furthermore, needs a judgment to be known as such. In other words, since we cannot give to the ipsum esse rei of judgment the meaning of act of existing as pure actuality, the only remaining possibility is to give it the meaning of mode of existing. But there are ten modes of existing, one of which belongs characteristically to substance and the nine others to accidents. Consequently, if judgment is terminated in the mode of existing of things, it simply means that judgment knows the real as substance and accidents, as substance composed of essential elements, and as multiple accidents of one or another substance.

Let us examine this interpretation of ipsum esse rei in relation to St. Thomas’ explicit teaching about the nature of judgment.

Just as there are two elements in a thing, its quiddity and its act of existing, so are there two intellectual acts corresponding to these two elements. One by which the intellect apprehends the quiddities of things... the other by which it understands the act of existing, by composing an affirmation, because the existere of a thing composed of matter and form... also consists in a certain composition of form with matter or of accident with subject.

This passage is in itself sufficiently explicit to show that the esse in question is the whole being of the thing, its essence and its existence, and not only the substantial but also the accidental mode of existence. Here is another text further explaining the passage just quoted:

The likeness of a thing is received into the intellect according to the mode of the intellect, not according to the mode of the thing. Hence, although something on the part of the thing corresponds to the composition and division of the intellect, still it does not exist in the same way in the intellect and in the thing... Now in a material thing there is a twofold composition. First, there is a composition of form with matter. To this corresponds that composition of the intellect whereby the universal whole is predicated of its parts... The second composition is of accident with subject and to this composition corresponds that composition of the intellect whereby accident is predicated of subject, as when we say the man is white. Nevertheless the composition of the intellect differs from the composition of things; for the components in the thing are diverse, whereas the composition of the intellect is a sign of the identity of the components.... In other words, man is identical in subject with the being having whiteness. It is the same thing with the composition of form and matter. For animal signifies that which has a sensitive nature; rational, that which has an intellectual nature; man, that which has both; and Socrates, that which has all these things together with individual matter. And so, according to this kind of identity our intellect composes one thing with another by means of predication.

Were it necessary to expound this text, we might say that there are as many modes of enunciation for the judgment as there are modes of existing for composite things. If the mode of composition is that of essence and existence, we have an enunciation with two terms or a judgment of existence, in which the existere itself enters into composition with the subsistent, as in “Socrates is,” a judgment whose composition should logically be translated, ens habens esse individuale per se est. It is in this sense that St. Thomas affirms that in the judgment “Socrates is,” the is is a substantial predicate; i.e., it expresses the ipsum esse of Socrates and therefore a substantial mode of existing. When the mode of composition is in the very substance of things, then the enunciation designates the identity of the composite with one or the other of its essential components. as in “Socrates is an animal, or a man.” Finally, when the mode of composition is that belonging to a substance and its accidents, the enunciation indicates the accidental mode of this act of existing. Furthermore, the link between the mode of existing and the mode of predicating—that is, the enunciation itself, which is nothing but a relation of attribution or predication—is dogmatically affirmed when real being is divided into its ten modes:

Being must be divided into different kinds according to differences in modes of predicating, differences derived from diversity in the modes of being; for there are as many modes of predicating something as there are modes of signifying that something is.... And of things predicated, some designate substance, some the qualified, others the quantified and so on, to each mode of predication must correspond an identical being; thus when we say that man is an animal, being signifies substance; when we say man is white, it signifies quality, and so for the other modes. [In V Metaph., lect. 9, n. 890]

This analysis of the extrinsic term of judgment brings us right back to our starting point, where we said that judgment is the perfection of knowledge, because it is the unification of a multitude of concepts, a unity purporting to reorganize apprehension with the existence of things as a model. Things exist according to a substantial and accidental mode, the first giving them stability and the second, perfection. Judgment gives us the thing both in its being and in its perfect being, the two aspects being simultaneously perceived in the complex but single term, enunciation. Judgment is modeled after the mode of existing of things, and not after that act of existing perceived as the perfection of quiddity.

2. Is ipsum esse rei the Object of Judgment? In analyzing the nature of human knowledge, we saw that the object could signify two entirely different aspects of the thing. It can mean the thing as cause or principle of the act of knowledge, sensible or intellectual; on the other hand, it can signify this same thing as the term known by the cognitive act. The distinction between intelligible species and concept shows the difference between the two aspects of the object, the one being at the source of the act, the other manifesting its fruit. Now, we have just seen that the ipsum esse rei is the object term of our judgment, since the substantial and accidental composition of things is precisely what we know through this mental operation. It is a question of knowing whether it is also the object principle of our knowledge. To answer this question we need only recall the reasons necessitating the fruitful causality of sensible as well as intelligible reality, namely, the passivity of our powers, a formula that merely substitutes for an admission of ignorance or of non-possession of the real. But as soon as a passive power is fecundated by its object, it is active, it conceives, in the strictest sense of the word, that which it has become, and the concept or mental word—super-existence experienced in and by the mind—is born in complete reference to the real whose likeness it is. But at the beginning of the act of composing and dividing, the intelligible is already present; therefore, the passive phase is past.

There are two operations in the sensible part. One is limited to immutation, and thus the operation of the senses takes place when the senses are impressed by the sensible. The other is formation, inasmuch as the imagination forms for itself an image of an absent thing, or even of something never seen. Both of these operations are found in the intellect. For in the first place there is a passion of the possible intellect as informed by the intelligible species; and then the possible intellect, as thus informed, then forms a definition, or a division or a composition, which is expressed by language... Words do not therefore signify the intelligible species themselves, but that which the intellect forms for itself for the purpose of judging the external things. [S.Th., I, 85, 2, ad 3]

This is the sense in which we can say that the intellect takes the initiative in the act of judgment and that the term of this act is a work of reason and not a work of nature, as are simple apprehension and its concept. Therefore, we cannot say that the ipsum esse rei causes judicative knowledge by depositing in the possible intellect an intelligible species that is its likeness and whose enunciation is sort of image. This would be to reduce judgment to apprehension and to conceive human knowledge as an intuition of things according to their mode of existing; whereas knowledge has, by definition, an abstractive mode that breaks the thing’s concrete mode of existing down into as many absolutes as there are intelligible aspects in the thing. The relation of enunciation to the ipsum esse rei is that of measured to measure, and not of cause to its effect. Thus, it is not because a house is made up of feet and yards that it is measurable, but because it is built of materials that can be measured in feet and yards. Similarly, it is because the enunciation is made of concepts, likenesses of different aspects of a thing, that the composition it expresses can and must be measured by this extra-mental thing insofar as it concretely and singly contains these different aspects of which concepts are likenesses. The ipsum esse rei therefore is the object of judgment, not because it causes the composition of its term, enunciation, but because the ipsum esse rei is itself composite, thus, the intellect can compare the thing’s mode of existing with the mode of existing of its knowledge of things and perceive its conformity or non-conformity with the concrete real. What the ipsum esse rei causes in judicative knowledge is not the composition of concepts authored by the intellect, but the truth or falsity of this composition, which is another story, to be told in the next chapter.

B. The characteristic of enunciation as measured by the ipsum esse rei

Before concluding this section on judgment and its specification by extra-mental reality, we should emphasize the characteristics of its immanent term considered as intentional super-existence of the thing’s mode of existing. Enunciation, like the concept, can be considered in itself, that is, as an intellectual product possessing properties that are the result of its intelligible existence; but it can also be considered as a likeness of the real, and then the exigencies of realism bring it new properties. Considered as a fruit of the intellect, enunciation has three characteristics, as we have already seen. With reference to the mode of existing of things, it also has three characteristics depending upon whether we consider the subject, the verb or predicate, or the unified complex as representative of being and its mode. Just a word about each of these properties will be enough, for we shall meet them again in studying truth.

First Characteristic: Enunciation Is Necessary, Impossible, Possible. The basis for these properties is the subject insofar as it is the likeness of a nature which needs or rejects this or that predicate, or is neutral with respect to such and such a predicate, i.e., with respect to this substantial or accidental form. Thus, the following enunciations, “Man is reasonable... Man is an ass... Man is white,” respectively indicate the natural need, repugnance, and neutrality that human substance entertains with respect to the three predicates attributed to it. This characteristic of enunciation resulting from its subject as likeness of the thing is basic to the division of predicates into substantial, accidental per se, and accidental properly so called.

A predicate behaves in three ways toward a subject. Firstly it signifies what the subject is, as in “Socrates is an animal.”... Secondly when it signifies what inheres in the subject, either by itself and absolutely as flowing from the matter, and this is quantity, or as flowing from the form, and this is quality; or it signifies what inheres in the subject not absolutely but with reference to another, and this is relation. Thirdly the predicate signifies what is extrinsic to the subject. [In V Metaph., lect. 9, nn. 891-892]

Second Characteristic: Enunciation Is Categorical or Hypotbetical. The source of this property is not the subject but the verb-predicate; for example, “Socrates is seated,” “If Socrates is seated, he is not running.” This characteristic of enunciation is entirely in relation to the verb, to such a degree that the subject can change indefinitely without in any way modifying the meaning of this judicative composition. That is why this category of enunciation is usually called formal, as opposed to the first category, called material, because of the analogy between the function of subject and predicate in a mental composition and the function of matter and form in a physical composite.

The predicate is the principal element in an enunciation because it is its formal and perfective part. [In I perih., lect. 8, nn. 9, 11]

When the intellect constructs a composition, it takes two concepts, one of which, the predicate, has a formal function toward the other insofar as it exists in it; and that is why predicates always have a formal value. [In IX Metaph., lect. 11, n. 1898]

Hypothetical enunciation also has to do with the verb or predicate since it is constructed of two categorical enunciations, one of which depends upon the other, as to both its existence and its truth. The importance of this second characteristic of enunciation lies in the knowledge of truth, for only a categorical enunciation contains an absolute of truth that can serve as starting point or the discovery of other absolute truths.

Third Characteristic: Enunciation Is True or False. This characteristic depends upon the whole content of the enunciation, and therefore upon the complex unit constituted by the relation which the mind sets up between the subject and predicate. It is not the act of judging that is formally true or false, but the fruit of its activity, its enunciation:

Truth pertains to what the intellect says and not to the operation by which its says it. For the intellect to be true it is not necessary that the act itself be equated with the thing, since the thing is often material whereas the act is always immaterial; but what the intellect says and knows by its act must be equated with the thing, that is, the thing must be as the intellect says it is. [C.G., I, 69]

The above remark is of primary importance to our study of truth in the next chapter; for if enunciation, the immanent fruit of the intellect, is the subject of truth, then this fruit must exist before truth can exist. Just as it is neither matter nor form that exists, but the composite of this matter and this form, so is it neither the subject, nor the predicate, nor the intellectual act uniting them that is truth, but the enunciation resulting from the composition of subject and predicate by the intellect.

This third property of enunciation, resulting from its unity with reference to the unity of the ipsum esse rei, necessarily accompanies every enunciation insofar as it is measured by things. It is the soul of the concept of this second mental operation, and when this soul is defective, when the enunciation is devoid of truth, it is a monster in the order of intellectual procreation:

A false opinion in the order of knowledge is what a monster is in corporeal nature, for it is outside the finality of the first principles, which are as the seminal powers of knowledge, just as monsters occur despite the intention of the agent’s natural causality. [De veritate, 18, 6]

St. Thomas formally defines enunciation in terms of its finality, its intention to be naturally equated with the mode of existing of things, both as an intellectual concept and as the external sign of this concept:

Here is the definition of enunciation: enunciation is discourse in which exist the true and the false...

Of all the types of intellectual discourse, the true and the false exist only in enunciation, because only enunciation signifies absolutely the intellectual concept in which the true and false exist. [In I Perih., lect. 7, n. 2, 4]

We must now study the epistemological structure of this essential property of enunciation, as well as the way in which it comes into the intellect; this will be the subject of our next chapter.

CHAPTER 9
TRUTH AS THE EFFECT OF JUDGMENT AND OBJECT OF KNOWLEDGE

Since truth consists in a certain rectitude and commensuration, its measure must be included in its definition. [In I Sent., 19, 5, 2, ad 2]

Truth, as we have just seen, is an effect of judgment because it is a property of its immanent term, enunciation, inasmuch as this term refers, as to its measure, to the mode by which things exist. It is also the object of judicative knowledge, since judgment knows its verb and what measures it. Therefore, this chapter will study these two aspects of truth. In the first section we shall analyze truth as the effect of the act of composing and dividing; in the second we shall deal with truth as the object experienced by this same intellectual act.

Section I Truth as Effect of Judgment

That truth is in the mind is continually affirmed by St. Thomas; the frequency of this first affirmation is almost matched by a second, that truth exists properly and formally only in the second operation of the mind, judgment. On the other hand, some forms of expression seem to identify truth and things, and to affirm that truth exists in the act of apprehension and even in sense knowledge. Therefore, this word has several meanings, just as have the words being and knowledge, and consequently we must discover the first root meaning that will serve as the principle governing the hierarchy of secondary meanings. The word truth is analogous, and we must find the first analogate—what this word means first and foremost—before we are able to apply it to others extrinsically. Let us therefore examine the different senses of the word truth and try to discover the unity or ruling principle of its different meanings.

A. Multiplicity and unity of meanings of the word truth

Although the etymological origin of words tells us nothing definite about their philosophical meaning, it can nevertheless help us discover the deep intuitions that have led men to fashion a new word designating a reality of the intellectual order. The etymology of the Greek word alêtheia and its Latin equivalent veritas, which in English we render as truth, is quite suggestive. The Greek alêtheia comes from lêtkô, ancient form of lanthanô, which means to escape notice, to remain invisible, concealed, and from the negative a, which destroys the negative sense of the original word and replaces it by a wholly positive idea, namely, that of being discovered, perceived, visible, and, therefore, luminous. According to this origin, truth would mean either the luminousness of the real, its evidence, or the mind’s discovery of this luminosity. The Latin veritas is rooted etymologically in a wholly different primitive intuition, having to do with belief, choice; thus derived, truth signifies the intellect’s choice, its belief, or, again, the thing chosen or believed. So, with both Greeks and Latins there is, at the root of the word they adopted to signify the epistemological reality we call truth, the idea of an interference between the real and our powers of knowing, for discovery implies a discoverer and something to be discovered; and belief or choice is unintelligible without a subjective and objective element. In this linguistic context, truth means what the intellect discovers and chooses, or the act by which it succeeds in discovering or choosing.

Despite the insight it provides into the psychology of the inventors of the word, the etymological definition of truth cannot serve as a basis for philosophical investigation of the notion, for words have a life of their own; they are born and transformed in the course of time and take on new meanings that become popular and then the common property of mankind. Philosophical reflection must take as its starting point the nominal definition of truth, a, definition that may be formulated as follows: Truth is an agreement between thought and its object. Starting from this general notion, let us try to discover the elements necessary to make this notion of truth intelligible and place them in order according to their respective importance.

1. Truth Is an Agreement. Politicians speak of agreement among nations, grammarians of agreement between subject and verb, musicians of agreement between notes, and moralists of agreement between conscience and acts! What these different uses of the word agreement have in common is the existence of a plurality of factors coincident with a certain unity or harmony. Thus, when we define truth as an agreement, we must find both the multitude and the unity, the multitude being made up of knowledge and the real, whereas the unity consists in their harmony. But what kind of harmony are we talking about? Harmony between musical notes is brought about by the musician, agreement between subject and predicate by him who writes grammatically, agreement among peoples, when it exists, by the stronger power! Is there, then, a power superior to our intellect and to the material reality that is its object, of which one function is to set up a sort of pre-established harmony whereby truth would be defined? Undoubtedly such a power exists for St. Thomas, and later we shall see what role it plays in the existence of human truth. But the mass of men are certainly not thinking about this superior power when they conceive truth as an agreement, for their outlook has neither this breadth nor this universal perspective. When men speak of agreement in defining truth, they simply mean a harmony existing between knowledge and the real. But who is the author of this agreement, the real or knowledge? That is to say, is it a question of things being in accord with knowledge or knowledge agreeing with things? Which one agrees with the other, bows to the other’s needs?

This question is easy to answer after all that we have seen about the nature of knowledge—intentional assimilation of the real, therefore, essentially measured by it—and about the nature of judgment and its term. Knowledge is measured by exterior things; knowledge must agree with the real, and not vice versa.

The reason you are white is not that we truly think you are, but on the contrary, we truly think you are white because you are white. [In IX Metaph., lect. 11, n. 1897]

If things cause the truth of our knowledge, do they cause this truth because they are true, as a man begets a man because he himself is a man, or does a causality other than efficient causality enter here? This is the second question to be answered.

2. Things Are the Measure of Truth. Here is a brief synthesis explaining the problem we have just posed—first the question, then the answer:

QUESTION: That because of which a thing is so, is itself more so... But it is from the fact that a thing is or is not, that our thought or word is true or false... Therefore truth resides rather in things than in the intellect.

ANSWER: Although the truth of our intellect is caused by the thing, yet it is not necessary that the essence of truth should be there primarily, any more than that the essence of health should be primarily in medicine rather than in the animal: for it is the power of medicine not its health that is the cause of health, since the agent is not univocal. In the same way, the being of the thing, not its truth, is the cause of truth in the intellect. Hence the Philosopher says that an opinion or a statement is true from the fact that a thing is, not from the fact that a thing is true. [S.Th., I, 16, 1, ad 3]

What is the analogical causality by means of which the thing can produce that which it itself does not possess? To understand and solve this difficulty, without transgressing the laws of cognitive life and those of reality, we must call to mind everything we have seen about the nature of the object and its double causality. On the one hand, the causality that exists at the beginning of the cognitive act and unites with the knowing power to form a total and single cause of the act and concept in the order of exercise, and, on the other hand, the causality that is the term of this same cognitive activity and measures it extrinsically. When we say that the thing causes truth not because it is true but because it is, we are considering the thing as the specifying and extrinsic object of true knowledge, and from this aspect, truth is not in it: “That any thing be the object of a true affirmation of the intellect or of discourse is accidental to that thing.”

Now let us investigate the mode of causality according to which the being of things really causes the truth of our knowledge without formally possessing what it causes.

There are three categories of things whose names are signs. The first category, whose total and complete being is exterior to the soul, are complete realities, like man or stone. The second are in no way outside the soul, like dreams or chimaeras. The third have their foundation in extra-mental reality but need to be supplemented, as it were, by an operation of the soul. This supplement formally constitutes their definition, as e.g. in the case of the universal. Humanity is actually an aspect of the real but, as real, universality does not belong to it, because outside the soul there is no humanity common to many. But, once known by the intellect, the latter by means of an action adds a relation which makes humanity a species... Similarly for truth, whose foundation is in the thing but whose essential supplement is provided by that operation wherein the intellect apprehends things according to their mode... By means of this operation by which the intellect apprehends the being of the thing as it is, by imitating it the relation of adequation which defines truth is completed. We must also add that the being of the thing is the cause of truth only insofar as it exists in the act of intellectual knowledge. [In I Sent., 19, 5, 1]

This is a capital text for the comprehension of the nature of truth and the role that extra-mental reality and cognitive activity unite to play in constituting its nature. First of all, the thing’s mode of existing is given as that which acts as foundation with respect to the unity that is truth, and as a foundation which is identical with a cause, since the thing is cause of the truth of our knowledge. The meaning of these two terms and their role as essential component of truth is explained in the following text.

The truth or falsity of discourse or of enunciation must be referred to the disposition of the thing as to their cause. When the intellect constructs a composition, it takes two concepts, one of which, the predicate, has a formal function with respect to the other, insofar as it exists in it... So if such an intellectual operation must be referred to the thing as to its cause, then in composite substances the composition of matter and form or of what plays the role of matter and form, or again the composition of accident with subject, must guarantee, as foundation and cause of truth, the composition which the intellect forms interiorly, and expresses in discourse. Thus, when I say Socrates is a man, the truth of this composition is caused by the composition of the human form with individual matter which makes Socrates to be this man; and when I say that the man is white, the cause of this truth is the composition of whiteness with a subject: and the same is true in every case. [In IX Metaph., lect. 11, n. 1898]

For the extra-mental thing to be the cause and foundation of truth, then, means that it guarantees, justifies the intellect’s composition of concepts. The composition of the thing bears witness to the composition the mind constructs; it testifies, as a model does for a copy, that the intellect’s fruit conforms with the complexity of the extra-mental thing, that by means of this fruit the intellect super-exists the thing according to the mode of unity this thing has outside the mind. The truth of knowledge is therefore the consequence of a sort of intellectual justice with respect to the thing, insofar as the latter exists in the intellect. The abstractive mode, to which everything entering the soul must submit, strips physical being of the concrete and existential unity that constitutes its wealth, by dispersing it into a multitude of fragmentary aspects which apprehension considers as absolutes. Judgment restores to the thing as known the unity it enjoys outside the soul, and this restoration of unity has as its necessary reward the truth of our knowledge itself.

3. Truth Exists Formally in Enunciation Alone. Since the truth of our knowledge is not caused by the truth of the thing but by its mode of existing considered as measure of the knowledge we have of it, truth exists formally in the soul and there only. But the soul is the scene of a multitude of different operations, those of the external senses, those of the intellect, which has at least two different types, simple apprehension and judgment. Why should not truth be possessed in common by each and every one of these operations, so that knowledge and truth might be convertible and thus to speak of true knowledge would be a pleonasm, while to attribute falsity to knowledge would be absurd! Furthermore, this would seem necessarily to be so, since our definition of the thing, as object of human knowledge has shown us that the only way being could really deserve the title of object is as measure of the act of knowledge. But we have just seen that truth consists in the measurement of knowledge by being, which is the definition of knowledge itself insofar as it is a super-existence of the thing in the soul.

Not only the definition of knowledge seems to necessitate identification of knowledge and truth, but the usual formulae used by philosophers would seem to make this identification inevitable. Thus, the axiom, that being and truth are convertible, certainly gives the impression that this is so; also, we habitually say that sensation is true, common sense is true, apprehension is true, etc. Unless we accuse philosophers as a whole of inexact terminology and deny everything that we have been saying about the second operation of the mind and the properties of enunciation, we shall have to discover the reason which makes truth the exclusive property of the second mental operation and which at the same time warrants the character of universal predicate that seemingly belongs to it. This reason has already been mentioned: The notion of truth is analogical.

We have not yet spoken of analogy, the key notion of Thomistic epistemology, although we have used it constantly in analyzing knowledge, and particularly in analyzing our knowledge of being as such. The difficulties brought up by the word and concept of truth give us an opportunity to mention it here; therefore, we shall briefly explain the characteristics of analogical words and concepts. Analogy is a property belonging to certain names and concepts; it does not qualify the real but qualifies our knowledge and naming of the real insofar as it is diverse and as its unity is reducible neither to generic nor to specific identity, nor to the identity of a subject. The univocity of knowledge corresponds to the quidditative unity of things, and analogy corresponds to unity of order or causality between many things precisely because of their multitude. “In creatures one form does not exist in several supposita except by unity of order, as the form of an ordered multitude... For we say that many men are a college or an army or a people.”

Analogy is therefore an intellectual procedure by which a multitude of concepts signifying different things are united by virtue of a certain order that we discover between them and the things they signify. Analogy is an even more radical revelation of the mind’s allergy to multiplicity as such, for it reveals an effort, much more intense than univocity, to unify concepts so dissimilar that they can only be linked by our discovering a common bond of either dependence or functional similarity between them. The classical example used by St. Thomas is that of health applied to concepts as different as climate, complexion, animal, and mind. Obviously, these four concepts have nothing in common when taken absolutely; yet, the intellect can unify them by stressing the relations that can be set up between them. An animal is said to be healthy because it has a well-balanced organism, climate is said to be healthy because it contributes to this balance, the complexion because it indicates it, and the mind because it enjoys, intellectually and morally, an equilibrium comparable with that of a healthy body. Therefore, the unity of an analogical concept is not based upon identity of nature, or upon the identity of the single subject of many accidents, but upon an order discovered by reason between concepts that can be interrelated because the things of which they are the likenesses are related through causality, origin, or likeness.

Thus, considering the notion of truth from the aspect of analogy, we must try to unify the multitude of concepts and things which this notion associates within an apparent unity. Words are, in effect, signs of concepts, and concepts are signs of things; to the unity of word must correspond unity of concept, and unity of concept necessarily signifies the unity of the thing conceived. We have just seen that the word truth can be used equally well to mean any kind of human knowledge, discourse or the expression of this knowledge, and the real that is its object. The same word seems to signify such a diversity of concepts and things that it signifies nothing, for if we take away a sign’s unity of meaning, we take away its soul, and thus it stops being a sign; for how can it reveal to another the speaker’s thought if it has no definite meaning? In such a case, it becomes equivocal and spreads confusion and error. To avoid the confusion inherent in a word and a notion designating a multitude, there must be a principle of order, a first meaning on which all the others depend.

A sign is ambiguous and fallacious when it signifies a number of things which have no order between them. But when it signifies things that are unified by a certain order of relationships, then it is a perfectly definite sign. [S.Th., III, 60, 3]

What is this first sense of the word and concept truth, which will serve as rallying point for all other meanings by being an element of their definition?

By its etymological meaning and its nominal definition, truth implies a multiplicity of components, and a multiplicity of components that are related to each other as cause to effect, the cause being the measure, and the effect, the measured. Thus, truth belongs to the category of relations of the third mode.

The third mode has to do with the relation of the measurable to its measure. This is not a matter of measure and measurable according to quantity... but according to a measurement of being and truth. For the truth of knowledge is measured by its object. From the fact that a thing exists or does not exist, enunciation is true or false, and not inversely. The same is true of the sense and the sensible. [In V Metaph., lect. 17, nn. 1003-1004]

This relation of measured to measure is usually connoted by the term adequation, and, like every relation, it requires two distinct terms—knowledge and the real—and a unifying principle called the foundation, which is the very form of the relation. By examining this relation of adequation that defines truth according to the essential requirements of every relation—that is, the distinction of terms and the nature of the foundation or cause uniting them—we quickly see that only in judicative activity do we find sufficient diversity between knower and known to establish a relation of equality between them.

Actually, in simple apprehension our sensory powers and our intellect are what they know, because apprehension’s mode is one of assimilation and identification with the fragmentary aspect of the thing it receives from the extra-mental real. To know is really to be the known, and so great is this unity of knowing power with things by means of intelligible species that we cannot discover in physical things a point of comparison to help us understand it; for even the, composition of essence and existence does not do justice to this mysterious identity between knower and object. Apprehension, whether sensory or intellectual, does not work toward a distinction between knower and thing, but toward a certain identification between them. The relation of adequation requires that the two terms, knower and known, oppose each other and that each have its own identity distinguishing it from the other and permitting comparison and, therefore, relationship.

Truth consists essentially in the adequation of thing and intellect. Now nothing can be equated with itself, for equality implies diversity. So the essence of truth exists in the intellect at the precise moment when, for the first time, the intellect possesses something of its own, something the extra-mental thing does not have but with which it has a certain equality making possible adequation between them.

Now when the intellect expresses quiddities it possesses nothing but the likeness of the exterior thing, just as the sense does when it receives the species of the sensible thing. But when it begins to judge the thing apprehended, then judgment itself is a typical possession of the intellect which does not exist in extra-mental reality. When it is equated with what is in the exterior thing, judgment is said to be true. But the intellect judges the thing apprehended only when it says that something is or is not, and this is what the intellect does in composing and dividing. Which is is why the philosopher says that composition and division exist in the intellect and not in things. [De veritate, I, 3]

In the light of our analysis of the judgment’s perfective role as an operation reassembling the concepts of apprehension, of its typical initiative, of the characteristics of the esse that properly express the composition it constructs—in this light, it is easy to understand and interpret the meaning of the seemingly ambiguous expression, “having something of its own,” the something that characterizes judgment and opposes it to the extra-mental real. Moreover, when St. Thomas speaks of something of its own which the thing has corresponding to the distinctive something belonging to the intellect, sed aliquid ei correspondens, his formulae become clear if we recall the meaning of ipsum esse rei and its function as measure of truth. Since the mode by which things exist is complex, and since this complexity corresponds to the conceptual composition constructed by the intellect, there is a possibility of adequation because there are two distinct terms. For the complexity of the thing’s mode of existing is wholly different from the composition of concepts constructed by the mind, and this complex thing’s mode of unity is also entirely different from the mode of identity that the mind sets up between the subject and predicate. In the act of judgment, therefore, we have the elements necessary to the distinction of terms in the relation of adequation that is truth, whereas this distinction must be denied to the intellect and the senses in the act of apprehension. If senses and intellect had a likeness of the thing other than that which the thing causes in them, the result would be ignorance or absence of knowledge; for knowledge exists insofar as sensory or intellectual apprehension is identified with the thing, and insofar as this likeness of identity is absent, knowledge does not exist. To sum up the difference between knowledge and true knowledge in their dependence upon the extra-mental thing, Wt can say that knowledge exists insofar as the thing causes knowledge and is its principle by giving it what it is through the intermediation of intentional species, consequently, insofar as the knower is identical with the thing. But knowledge is true exactly to the degree that the intellect recombines, reassembles the fragmentary identities of the thing that it is through apprehension, and this reassemblage is guaranteed by the unified complexity of the thing. The thing measures the being of knowledge insofar as it is identical with it, but it measures the truth of knowledge insofar as knowledge by its synthesizing activity identifies a multitude of concepts with its concrete mode of existing.

Only in the operation of composing and dividing do there arise the elements essential to a relation of adequation. But is the foundation, the formal or causal component of this relation in the act or in its term? Since truth is in the intellect and not in things, the foundation for the relation of adequation must be found in the intellect, for judgment is relative to the real, and not the contrary. In studying the properties of enunciation as term of the act of judgment, we say that judgment, as referred to the real, is necessarily true or false, for it (but not the act which begets it) is equated with reality. Therefore, the immanent foundation of all human knowledge is enunciation, and this foundation is none other than the verb-predicate that signifies the unity of the composition constructed by the mind, therefore, that which characterizes judgment as such and makes it comparable with the mode of existing that things have outside the mind.

The following text sums up the explanations we have been giving about the nature of truth and its formal localization in the concept of the second intellectual operation:

Truth belongs to what the intellect says and not to the operation by which it says it. For the truth of the intellect it is not necessary that the act itself be equated with the thing, since often the thing is material whereas the act is always immaterial; but what the intellect says and knows by its act must be equated with the thing.... When, on the contrary, what is said and understood is incomplex, the incomplex considered in itself is neither equated nor not-equated with the thing, for equality and inequality imply relation; but the incomplex considered in itself implies no relation or application to the thing, so that it can neither be said to be true nor false, unlike enunciation which involves comparison of the incomplex with the thing by the sign of composition or division. [C.G., I, 59]

When therefore, we speak of truth in the formal sense of the word, we always mean a property of enunciation considered as immanent term of the second operation of the mind, insofar as this immanent term, being distinct from the being of things, is related as measured to measure with the thing whose complex unity it expresses. However, since truth is an analogical notion, it follows the law of analogical attribution and designates multiple but ordered things.

When anything is predicated of many things univocally, it is found in each of them according to its proper nature; as animal is found in each species of animal. But when anything is predicated of many things analogically, it is found in only one of them according to its proper nature, and from this one the rest are denominated. So healthiness is predicated of animal, of urine and of medicine; not that health is not only in the animal, but from the health of the animal, medicine is called healthy insofar as it is the cause of health, and urine is called healthy insofar as it indicates health. And although health is neither in medicine nor in urine, yet in either there is something whereby the one causes and the other indicates health. [S.Th., I, 16, 6]

We have seen that things are said to be true, that discourse is said to be true, and that the other operations of knowledge are called true. The truth of enunciation must therefore be what is formally true, and the rest must all be called true by denomination or reference to this equivalence.

The truth of enunciations is nothing other than the truth of the intellect, for an enunciation resides in the intellect and in speech. Now according as it is in the intellect, it has truth in itself, but according as it is in speech, it is called enunciable truth, according as it signifies some truth of the intellect and not because of any truth residing in the enunciation as though in a subject... In like manner, it has been already said that things are called true from the truth of the intellect. [S.Th., I, 16, 7]

B. Truth is the effect of judgment

It is now easy to understand the statement made at the beginning of this chapter, that truth is an effect of judgment. For if truth exists formally in our mind only as a property of the term of the second mental operation, the cause of this term or of enunciation is the cause of this truth’s existence in us. Therefore, the existence of truth is really an effect of the second operation of the mind and must primarily be sought there, not in the operation causing it but in its living fruit, enunciation, whose soul is truth. In every act of knowing other than judgment and the reasoning flowing from it, truth cannot be spoken of in the strict sense. The knowing power can be said to be true, as we say of a thing that it is true, but we cannot say that the knowledge possessed by this power is true.

Since everything is true according as it has the form proper to its nature, the intellect, as a knowing power, must be true according as it has the likeness of the thing known, which is its form as a knowing power.... Truth therefore may be in the sense or in the intellect knowing what a thing is, as in a true thing, but not as a thing known is in the knower, which is implied by the word truth; for the perfection of the intellect is true as known. [S.Th., I, 16, 2]

Thus, truth exists formally in enunciation alone, in this complexum that is the product of the intellect; all other simple concepts make the intellect true because they are its form as knowing power, but they themselves are neither true nor false: “Although the incomplex intelligible is neither true nor false, the intellect conceiving it is true insofar as it is equated with the thing.”

We shall now consider the truth of enunciation whose existence is an effect of judgment as the object of our knowledge, in order to see the procedure by which the intellect, in giving existence to truth, can simultaneously be aware of it.

Section II: Truth as Object of Knowledge

Truth is the effect of judgment since it exists formally only in enunciation and is as its property. It is therefore in the mind that we must seek it as object of our knowledge, and at the term of the act called judgment. “From what we have just said it is also evident that the true and the false, as objects of knowledge, exist in the mind.” Like every object of knowledge, truth can be considered in two ways: in its existence and in its nature. To know the existence of an object is to perceive it in its natural being by a sort of experience or intuition; to know its quiddity is to grasp its intelligibility absolutely, independently of its particular realizations. We can perceive one or more truths because they exist in the mind as epistemological facts, and being in possession of these facts, we can seek out the constitutive factors that define and distinguish one truth from another; this is quidditive knowledge of the different truths we experience. But knowledge that a thing exists always precedes knowledge of its determinate nature, for it would be absurd to look for a thing’s quiddity before having observed its existence. We must therefore analyze the processes by which the intellect knows truths as existing within it before examining the nature of these different truths. The study of these two aspects of our knowledge of truth will be undertaken in the two following subsections.

A. How do we know that an enunciation is true?

It is an undeniable epistemological fact that man is aware that he knows truth and also that he knows that he is able to be in error. On this fact of the coexistence of error and truth in the human soul, all modem epistemology has been constructed. But knowledge of the existence of truth and error brings up a special difficulty, because truth and error are relations and consequently require the apprehension of two terms, namely, what the intellect says and the mode of existing of things in its function as measure. Knowledge of the existence of truth presupposes simultaneous awareness of both the enunciation and the thing it is concerned with, which cannot be done without a certain reflection whose object is necessarily the intellect’s own activity with reference to extra-mental things. Of what does this reflection consist?

1. Need for Reflection to Apprehend the Existence of Truth. For some years there has been considerable discussion about the reflective aspects implied by the Thomistic theory of the knowledge of truth, either in order to answer idealist criticisms and set forth the critical character of the philosophia perennis. or else in response to the Thomistic texts that stress the importance of reflection. St. Thomas does undoubtedly state that reflection is necessary in order to perceive the existence of truth, but this is not surprising in view of his theory that the intellect first knows its object and then the concepts that present the object to it by reflecting on those concepts, which thus become objects of knowledge. Since truth exists formally only in the concept of the second mental operation, it is not extraordinary that the intellect perceives the truth of the concept by reflecting on this same concept, inasmuch as the latter does not exist in things or, consequently, in the object of judgment. The difficulty here is not the need for reflection, but its precise object; for the concept of the second mental operation, the enunciation as immanent term of judgment, can be known as true only insofar as it is referred to the thing’s mode of existing, and, apparently, therefore, only insofar as its whole being is essentially projected toward the being of the thing. Thus, we might ask what use there is in reflecting on the concept if its truth or falsity is revealed only by comparing it with its exterior measure.

Let us examine the most explicit text concerning the need for reflection in grasping the existence of truth in our knowledge:

Truth is in the intellect and in the sense, but not in the same way. For it is in the intellect both as a consequence of its act, and as known by it; it proceeds from the intellect’s operation accordingly as the latter’s judgment expresses the thing as it is; but it is known by the intellect accordingly as the intellect reflects upon its act, not only to know it but to perceive its relation to the thing. But this relation cannot be known unless the nature of the act be known, and the latter cannot be known except the nature of its active principle be known, the intellect itself, whose whole being is to conform with things. So it is by reflecting upon itself that the intellect knows truth. [De veritate, I, 9]

First, let us divide this passage according to its content, then we shall see what meaning should be given to the reflection now being considered. To begin with, the particular context of this teaching is given by St. Thomas’ purpose: to distinguish truth in the senses from that in the intellect. In the senses, truth exists only as a consequence of a sensory judgment proceeding from the common sense, but it is not known by this operation because there is no reflection there. In the intellect, on the contrary, it is not only the consequence of intellectual activity, since it is a property of its immanent term, enunciation, but it is the object of intellectual knowledge, and this is where reflection comes in. The description of this reflection takes up the last part of the passage and can be divided according to the following aspects:

1. The purpose of reflection is to know the act of judgment and its implied relation with the real.
2. This relation with the real cannot be known except the nature of the act be known.
3. The nature of the act cannot be known unless that of the intellect, its principle, be also known.
4. But the nature of the intellect is to be conformed with things.
5. Therefore, it is by reflecting upon itself that the intellect knows truth (i.e., conformity of enunciation and thing).

In this argumentation there is an implicit syllogism marking the different analytical levels of our awareness of the existence of a true knowledge. The point of departure of this analysis is the existence of a true judgment that is the object of reflection. Here is its syllogistic formulation:

(1) To know truth is to perceive the relation between judgment and thing;
But to see the relation between judgment and thing is to perceive its nature;
Therefore, to know truth is to perceive the nature of judgment.

(2) But to perceive the nature of judgment is to know the nature of its active principle, the intellect;
Therefore, to know truth is to know the nature of the intellect.

(3) But to know the nature of the intellect is to see that it is naturally made to conform with things;
Therefore, to know truth is to perceive the intellect as naturally made to conform with things.

The general idea to be derived from this syllogistic description of the reflection by which we know that our knowledge is true in no way corresponds to the usual picture we have of it. The intellect is not described here as having the strabismic power to look in two directions at once, one eye fixed on the thing and the other on the concept of the judgment! This spatial imagery, requiring the intellect to step outside itself to compare its knowledge with the physical thing it copies, is the result of a complete misunderstanding of the intellect’s life and wholly destroys the immanence of the operations of knowledge: “The thing known is said to be the object of knowledge according as it subsists in itself outside the knower, although there can be no apprehension of this thing except as it exists in the knower.” We know things existing outside ourselves, but we know them because they exist in us. Knowledge of truth is not arrived at by comparing things as known with things as existing, for that brings up the famous problem of the bridge with which the whole history of idealism is filled, and whose solution is impossible because it is a pseudo-problem. The intellect knows truth by reflecting upon itself, and not by eyeing both its act and the extra-mental thing. Analyzing the reflection that must precede awareness that our knowledge is true has led us to this conclusion. Now let us try to define the meaning of this reflection more precisely.

2. Analysis of the Reflection by Which the Existence of Truth Is Known. We must note, for it is important, that the starting point of this reflection is necessarily judgment, since truth is the consequence of judgment and this consequence is what we want to know. It is from enunciation, term of the second operation of the mind and subject of truth, that this reflection starts whose object is to find out whether enunciation is equated with the real. One might normally expect that a description aiming to discover this relation of adequation with the thing would consist in a comparison between the complexity of the thing and the complexity of the enunciation. However, this is not so, because the whole process of reflecting is directed toward the intellect and its life. St. Thomas concludes that our knowledge of the existence of truth parallels our knowledge of the nature of the intellect, and, at first glance, this appears quite paradoxical. But it is the only possible route that reflection can take, for it alone respects the nature of the pre-eminent life that is knowledge, while taking into account the nature of judgment, whose function is to perfect the life of knowledge.

Let us come back to the argumentation of the text we quoted above. The major of the first step (1) is the definition of truth; its minor is nothing but the definition of judgment, since the latter is formally defined as an opening upon the mode by which things exist. The conclusion is inevitable and is further confirmed by our study of truth as the effect of judgment.

The starting point for the second step (2) is the conclusion of the first syllogism, identifying knowledge of truth with that of the nature of judgment; then comes the statement that to apprehend the nature of judgment implies apprehension of the nature of the intellect that is its principle. The evidence of this statement can be perceived by recalling what has been said about our intellect’s natural need for totality and unification and the work it does in the second operation to satisfy this essential need to reassemble and clarify the knowledge acquired through simple apprehension. The human intellect takes the initiative in this second operation only because the first operation is not satisfactory since it stops halfway in its possession of being, due to the inevitable fragmentation to which the abstractive mode of simple apprehension subjects the real. Our natural need to judge and the determinate nature of this act reveal the profound finality of the active principle of this act. Thus concludes the second argumentation.

The third and last step (3) rests upon the definition of our intellect and its proper operation, knowledge. Its nature is to conform with things; that is its definition. Hesitation in accepting this definition of the intellect’s nature indicates that we have either misunderstood or forgotten the explanations that have been given of the nature of knowledge. For since knowing primarily consists in being what we know, and since we are not naturally what we know but must become it, then the intellect, like every power of knowledge, must be essentially a capacity to conform to things. This is the whole meaning of the formula, the intellect is a passive power, for the nature of a passive power is to let itself be informed by its object, to become con-formed with it, to communicate in the same form. What reflection discovers at the end of the third step is that our intellect does not make its objects but receives them, that they cause its knowledge in the order of specification, that its concepts are the effects of being’s causality upon the intellect, and that the intellect is what being makes it to be. Now, if by its concepts it is a likeness of the real, and if judgment consists in composing and dividing concepts that are naturally likenesses of things, then composition and division will naturally constitute a whole that is itself a likeness of the thing. Consequently, in seeking to discover the existence of truth, reflection is naturally directed, not toward the exterior object dealt with by judgment, but toward the act and its immanent principles. For the intellect demands by nature that its knowledge be true, because to know is to be what it is, and to know perfectly what is, is the definition of judgment: Judgment is to be perfectly what is.

3. The Term of Reflection that Makes Known the Existence of Truth. Does reflection end with the perception of the intellect’s nature and its passivity with respect to things? In the text we have just analyzed it is not pursued any further than that. But to perceive the intellect’s passivity is to be aware of its dependence upon things and, therefore, upon sensation and the phantasm that serve as grooms for the thing and help it penetrate to the soul’s depth, so that it may there be worked on by the agent intellect and be enabled to become the spouse of the possible intellect and the father of its concepts. Reflection must therefore continue until it apprehends the actual dependence of concepts upon phantasms, which are both the matter from which the agent intellect draws intelligible species and the copy or image in which the possible intellect contemplates its concept. Reflection may even go so far as to know the singular, when the truth of our judgment depends upon certain aspects of the thing whose mode of existing varies according to the individual. For example, I cannot know that the judgment, “Socrates is running,” is true without the actual help of sense knowledge. Here is a description of reflection concerned with the sensible origins of concepts that the judgment composes and divides to construct enunciation, thus true knowledge:

Sometimes the mind accidentally penetrates to singulars insofar as there is a continuity between the mind and the sensory faculties whose particulars are its object. This continuity may be established in two ways. First when sensory activity terminates in the mind, as occurs in motion going from things to the soul; and then the mind knows the singular by means of a certain reflection which, starting from knowledge of the object, which is a particular nature, consists in coming back upon knowledge of the act itself, and from apprehension of the act to apprehension of the species, its principle, and from knowledge of the species to knowledge of the phantasm from which it was drawn. In this way the mind has some knowledge of the singular. [De veritate, 10, 5]

It is not surprising that the intellect’s reflection should penetrate as far as the singular, for man knows through the intermediation of his intellectual as well as his sensory powers; he is the theatre where the drama of our knowledge of things is played, and the different personages appearing on this stage are as much his creation as they are that of things. He is therefore aware of all that is produced in the order of sensation and everything the agent intellect lays before the possible intellect, and all the universal concepts born of intellectual vitality, concepts both complex and incomplex. He is at the same time author and spectator of the whole of his knowledge and of each item in it.

What points should be especially noted in this study of our knowledge of the existence of truth? First of all, that this knowledge is possible to the same extent that man is aware of the processes by which he naturally grasps exterior things, by simple apprehension, as well as by the second operation of the mind. Secondly, that knowledge of the existence of truth is just as immanent an act as are the other acts of knowing, and consequently that it takes place wholly within the soul. To imagine that the intellect checks with exterior reality in order to see whether or not its judgment conforms with the existential mode of things is not only puerile but absurd, for we know only the reality that exists within us and nothing else. If we cannot control the legitimacy of the composition made by judgment without having recourse to physical reality as it exists outside the mind, then such control will always remain impossible! Knowledge of truth does not consist in going from the world of thought to that of being, but in being united with the world of being in the effects that its physical and intentional activity has caused or actually causes in our soul. Because being makes us to be itself, we can refer to the likenesses we have of it to see whether or not the composition constructed by judgment corresponds with what is.

There is a third and final point that must never be forgotten, which is that the mind’s compositions vary with the concepts it uses. For concepts can have a universal or particular, an essential or accidental meaning, and, depending upon the meaning of the concepts, the reflection leading to perception of our judgments’ truth or falsity goes all the way back to knowledge of the singular, or stops at phantasms. This remark brings us to the problem of the multiplicity of truths and their nature, which we shall study in the next section.

B. How do we know the hierarchy of truths?

When the mind makes these two judgments, “Peter is walking,” “Peter is a man,” it is author of two enunciations, that are formally true, and yet no one would maintain that the truth of the first enunciation is identical with that of the second, for the former has a stability totally lacking in the latter. Now, it seems contradictory to define truth as an adequation between the composition of concepts constructed by the mind and the composition existing in things, and to admit at the same time that there is a hierarchy in the diversity of truths. For just as it is impossible that a geometrical figure be more or less a circle or a triangle, so an adequation cannot be more or less adequate: either it exists, or it does not. It would seem then that the only possible multiplicity among truths would be numerical, because numerically distinct acts of intellect are the principles of successive enunciations, just as there are numerically distinct circles because different materials have circular form. But not only are truths numerically multiple, they are diverse, and their diversity is such that it is impossible to reduce them to absolute unity; only a certain hierarchical order and unity of proportionality are possible. Thus, we must look for the cause of this hierarchy in the multiplicity of truths, whose very existence seems to destroy the nature of truth, that is, its essential need to be adequated with the real. Here is how St. Thomas states the problem and gives it a universal solution, a solution we shall have to explain carefully in order to perceive its full riches.

Since truth is defined as the adequation of intellect and thing, it cannot admit of more or less from the point of view of equality, because equality excludes the more and the less; consequently we cannot speak of a more or less true enunciation. But if we consider the being of the thing which is the measure of truth, then, as is said in the second book of the Metaphysics, there is the same disposition of things in being and in truth and therefore things which are more are also more true. [De caritate, 9, ad 1]

The consequence of this doctrine is this: Every time the question of degree and hierarchy comes up between different truths, it is not the intellect’s adequation that is being considered, but the ipsum esse rei to which enunciation must be strictly equated under penalty of not being true. Consequently, there are as many typically different truths. as there are cases of ipsum esse rei capable of measuring the different compositions constructed by the mind and expressed in and by the complex concept that is enunciation. In other words, to use the Aristotelian adage so often repeated by St. Thomas, there are as many dispositions of simple concepts in the compositions made by judgment as there are dispositions of things in being, because truth exists formally only in the immanent term of the act of composing and dividing. We must keep in mind here that the term dispositio has a technical meaning in Thomism, that it always implies multiplicity and order in the multiple. The same is true of the expression ipsum esse rei, which implies, at the minimum, the composition of essence and existence and can, and most frequently does, connote the multiplicity of substantial principles of natures as well as the accidents of these natures. It seems advisable again to quote one of our Master’s most explicit commentaries on the adage, “There is the same disposition of things in being and in truth.” This commentary defines dispositio in esse in terms of the composition that enunciation must imitate to be equated with what is:

Truth and falsity in discourse and enunciation must be referred to the disposition of things as to their cause. But when the intellect constructs a composition it takes two concepts, one of which, the predicate, has a formal function with respect to the other, insofar as it is considered as existing in it... And that is why, since such an operation of the intellect must be referred to the thing as to its cause, in compound substances the composition of matter and form, or of what plays the role of matter and form, or again the composition of accident and subject, must guarantee after the fashion of a foundation or cause of truth, the composition which the intellect forms interiorly and expresses in discourse. So when I say: Socrates is a man, the truth of this enunciation is caused by the composition of the human form with individual matter which makes Socrates this man; and when I say: man is white, the cause of this truth is the composition of whiteness with a subject, and so for all cases. The same is true concerning division. [In IX Metaph., lect. 11, n. 1900]

Thus, the correct translation of the expression dispositio rerum in esse can only be the mode by which things exist, as we defined it above, and this is what differentiates and brings hierarchy into truths.

If the composition and division of the thing is the cause of truth and falsity of enunciation in discourse, then it necessarily follows that a difference of composition and division in the being of things produces a difference of truth and falsity in enunciation and discourse. [In VII Metaph., lect. 3, n. 1310]

The things’ mode of existing is thus the absolutely primary source of diversity in human truths. This existential mode of things can be considered from three different angles, which give rise to three different kinds of truths.

There are three possible ways of considering the nature of a thing. The first considers this nature according to the being it has in singulars, for example, the nature of stone in this stone or that. The second is concerned with the nature as it exists in the intellect. The third consideration has to do with the nature as an absolute, independent of its singular and universal existence. [Quodlibeta, 8, 1]

The singular mode of being is the measure of all existential truths, those bearing upon the individuating notes of singular things, upon all the phenomena observed by popular and scientific knowledge. These truths necessarily require control by the sense or its substitute, the instrument, since the composition that measures enunciation belongs to the singular and physical order. The intelligible or universal mode of being is the measure of all logical truths, even those concerned with nonbeing and privations, and these truths cannot be guaranteed by the individual mode of existing. For example, take the following reasoning: “Man is a species, but Peter is a man; therefore, Peter is a species.” This reasoning is not valid because the first enunciation is measured by the intelligible being of man, the second by his absolute being or quod quid est, and the third attributes to an individual that which belongs to the intelligible or universal mode of being. Consideration of natures in their absolute being, in their quod quid est, gives birth to all abstract truths, analogical truths concerned with being as such, as well as those concerned with natures considered in their essential elements and properties. This is the field of abstraction, total as well as formal, the abstraction of apprehension as well as that of judgment. Abstraction leads us to the realm of science and wisdom, therefore, to knowledge of truth as infallible, a topic to be dealt with in the fourth and last part of this book.

To summarize this over-brief outline of the diversity of truth, let us compare this doctrine with what has just been said about the properties of enunciation:

(1) Every enunciation is true or false, therefore, equated or not equated with the existential mode of things. From this point of view, there are no multiplicities other than those of the number of truths, and all degrees or hierarchy of truths is impossible since adequation does not admit of more or less.

(2) However, if we take the measure of truth, that is, the specifying term of enunciation, then there is diversity and hierarchy among truths, for the modes of being measuring our judicative knowledge differ because the composition constituting them is different.

(3) When composition is logical, the truths involved are logical and are called universal, particular, or singular, according to the subject’s mode of signifying; they are affirmative or negative depending upon the nature of the verbal copula.

(4) When composition is physical and singular, the truths concerned are physical and contingent: “Peter exists, is white, is Paul’s son,” etc.

(5) When composition or division belongs to the order of absolute nature, truth is necessary because the bond between subject and predicate cannot not be, or, on the contrary, because this bond is contradictory. “Peter is a man,” “Peter is not an ass.” When the nature enters into composition with accidents that do not necessarily emanate from it, then the truth is contingent: “This man is white, a musician,” etc.

(6) When composition belongs to being as such, then all related truths are metaphysical and analogical, according to the mode of being implied.

CONCLUSION OF PART THREE

In Part Three we have explored the epistemological question, What does it mean to know truth? The bond linking this exploration of a natural property of human knowledge to the exploration of its nature springs from two sources. On the one hand, there is the radical imperfection of our intellect whose abstractive mode obliges it to break the real up into fragments in order to enable it to come into the intellect; on the other hand is the need for unity and wholeness, without which human knowledge would always remain essentially imperfect. Truth is an effect of the perfection of human knowledge, a perfection the intellect acquires by an act whose internal structure is altogether different from that of the apprehension we studied in Part Two under the heading, “What Does It Mean to Know?” We began our study by considering the act that produces truth, since the latter exists formally only in the soul; we analyzed judgment in its subjective causes, then in the intellectual operation from which it emanates by way of composition, and finally in the immanent term of this act called enunciation, whose properties are wholly other than those of the concept terminating simple apprehension. Having completed our study of immanent activity, we sought its object term; that is, we asked ourselves, “With what aspect of the exterior real do we enter into relation by the act of judgment?” Doctrinal and textual analysis here compelled us to conclude that the object term of judgment could only be the existential mode of things, or the real taken in its totality as essence and act of existing, substance and accidents. Judgment’s essential reference to exterior reality in its complexity gives to enunciation, the immanent term of judgment, an exclusive characteristic, the characteristic of being equated or not equated with the real to which its whole being refers, and it is at this moment that truth or falsity exists formally in the human intellect.

Since the existence of the truth of our knowledge is a fact, it was natural for us to inquire next into the genesis of this fact, its noetic and ontological implications, and then to study the procedures by which the mind becomes aware of truth. One last problem remained, namely, the multiplicity and hierarchy of human truths, a problem that has been a stumbling block for most philosophers from the Greeks to our day, and whose final solution will be found in the fourth and last part of this treatise on epistemology. As we have just seen, this problem is not tied to truth as adequation but to the measure of this adequation, i.e., the being-term of judicative knowledge. Our intellect is in debt to the thing, since it must receive from this reality its object causes or principles. Every just debtor reimburses his creditor for what the latter has lent him, capital plus interest. By the act of judgment, the intellect settles its accounts with extra-mental reality, it acknowledges that it is what the real has made it to be. When this acknowledgment is complete and integral, then enunciation—which represents both the capital borrowed from the thing and the interest that the intellect’s life has made it produce—then enunciation is just, i.e., true. Human truth might therefore be defined as the justice a debtor-intellect renders to things when it acknowledges its creditor as the primary possessor of all the wealth of knowledge whose use and usufruct it has. Human truth is a sort of recognition, in the sense that it is new knowledge of things already known and an act of gratitude toward the thing that has given itself for the intellect’s nourishment, to make it grow and attain perfection: “And yet, even created truth, which resides in our intellect, is greater than the soul, not absolutely, but to the extent that it is the perfection of the intellect...”

Such is the meaning of the knowledge of truth; it is not identical with human knowledge, as Descartes and Kant would have it, but is added to knowledge as accidents are added to every created substance, to give it the second actuality without which—even while it is absolute being—it would remain imperfect and unable to reach the end for which it is made. If error were to take the place of truth, then would our knowledge become a monster, because it would run counter to the nature of the intellect and its Author.