PROPOSITION LXXVI.

Formal Conceptual Truth merely adds, over and above the entity of the judicial act, a connotation of the object as being really that which it is represented to be in the Concept.

This Proposition may fairly be considered as a Corollary of the preceding. For, as Conceptual Truth is neither a real nor a logical relation, yet essentially consists in the conformity of the intellectual Concept with its object; and, as it is not a fortiori a real absolute perfection; nothing is left but that it should be the vital representative act itself, in conjunction with the aforesaid connotation. Thus, too, it is clearly seen how, the judicial act remaining identically the same, it may be now true, now false, by reason of a change in the object. For such a change would necessarily involve the loss of the connotation required for the existence of Conceptual Truth.

ARTICLE II.

Material Conceptual Truth.

According to the definition already given in the introduction to this Chapter, Material Conceptual Truth consists in a simple conformity between the idea and its object, to the exclusion of all intellectual recognition of such conformity. The mind is conscious indeed, of its own act; it ever must be. But it is a direct consciousness; and there is no reflex Judgment on the act. Not but that the intellect can form reflex ideas; for, as is well known, there are ideas psychologically, and ideas ontologically, reflex. Yet snch reflection is voluntary and express, and exercises itself upon a previous idea. The reflection which is the invariable concomitant of the judicial act, is, on the contrary, spontaneous and, as it were, implicit; so that it accompanies the act which is its object. Of course, Material Conceptual Truth can be predicated univocally of an intellectual act alone; but it is analogically attributed likewise to sensible perception, as will be explained in the ensuing Thesis.