The Divine Lamp

3.  Principal characteristics of ideas.

but if ideas, or, in other words, the ideal and possible objects, are not furnished by the senses, whence then do they come?

Let us begin by examining the essential characteristics of ideas.  These are principally two-namely universality and necessity.

An ideal object or one that is merely possible, is always universal, in this sense, that taken by itself it enables us to know the nature of all the indefinite number of individuals in which it is or may be realized.  Take, for example, the idea of man.  The idea of man is the same as the ideal man.  Whatever be the number of human individuals in whom this idea may be realized there is always the same nature of man; that nature is one, the individuals are many.

Now what does the idea of man, or the ideal man express and make us know?  The nature of man, if he had the power of creation, would be able by this alone to produce as many human individuals as he pleased.  In the same way this one idea is sufficient to enable us to discern all men who may ever come into existence.  So also a sculptor who had conceived the idea of a stature, would be able to reproduce it in marble as many times as he pleased, without the idea being ever exhausted.  The ideal stature would remain one and always the same, standing before the mind as the exemplar; the material copies would be many, all formed and made known by means of this same idea.  This is what is meant by the universality of ideas, by which they are categorically  distinguished from the real objects which are always particular, and from the sensations which are also particular.

The characteristic of necessity is equally evident, because the ideas being possible objects, it is clear that what is possible can never have been otherwise than possible, and hence it is such, necessarily.  The possible is that which involves no contradiction;every object, therefore, which involves no contradiction is necessarily possible.  Now all finite and real beings considered in their reality are contingent only and not necessary, in contradiction to possible beings.  For we may think of any finite or real being whatsoever as existing or not existing, whereas we can not think of the possible  object ceasing to be possible, that is to say, becoming not possible.  For example, man in his possibility is necessary, for you cannot make man an impossible being; on the contrary, a real man is always a contingent being, because he may or may not be.

Universality, therefore, and necessity are the two principal characteristics of the ideas.  These include two others-namely, infinity and eternity.

An infinity is necessarily involved in ideas, by reason of their universality.  No real and limited being is universal.  For reason of its very limits it is determined within itself and incommunicable to any other being.  Hence ideas do not belong to the class of real limited beings.

Ideas are also eternal, because they are necessary; for that which is necessary, and that which always is and always was  is eternal.

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